New Horizons
by Alex Checnkov
Summary: The prestigious and once gargoyles exclusive school in Avignon, France, opens its doors to humans. Some are excited, others upset, but all are eager to see the results of the experiment.
1. Prologue

All the characters appearing in _Gargoyles_ and _Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles_ are copyright Buena Vista Television/The Walt Disney Company. No infringement of these copyrights is intended, and is not authorized by the copyright holder. All original characters are the property of "Alex Checnkov."

* * *

**_New Horizons: Prologue_**  
Alex Checnkov

_Boulder, Colorado, July 2008_:

Jacob handed over the dollar bill to the attendant and watched eagerly as he proceeded to wrap the thin paper funnel around the wisps of colored sugar to produce a large helping of cotton candy.

"There you go, son," the man said when the task was over and he had handed the treat to him. "Don't eat it too fast."

"Thank you," Jacob's father said on his son's behalf as Jacob immediately ignored the attendant's advice and dove into the candy.

Jacob was with his father and his paternal aunt at the biannual county fair, a welcome change of scenery and pace from the family farm in Nebraska. The rides weren't as impressive as at some of the amusement parks he had been to in his life, but he was just happy to get away from chores for a while.

While Jacob walked with his father and aunt to another attraction, his ears picked up on a sharp laugh from a few booths away. He looked over and, with great surprise, saw four winged creatures, the group divided evenly between male and female, which gave him pause.

The two males were at the booth's counter and, if the females' grins were enough of an indicator, they were not having much success at whatever game it was they were playing. The males, one red and the other tan, were massive creatures, easily taller and more muscular than his father, with long tails, and, though caped, he could only guess that their wings were an impressive span as well.

The females, blue and yellow, holding prizes of stuffed animals and candy, though more slender and shorter than the males, were similar examples of strength and exotic beauty.

What amazed Jacob the most, however, was that as he looked at the surrounding humans, not one seemed to give the creatures more than a passing glance; even one of the security guards passed them with only a courteous nod in their direction.

Jacob tugged on his father's shirt with his available hand, abruptly interrupting the side conversation he was having with his sister, and asked, "Dad, what are those?" pointing in the creatures' direction.

His father followed Jacob's finger and said, "They're just gargoyles, Jacob. C'mon, you know it's rude to point and stare."

Jacob dutifully dropped his arm and followed up, "What's a gargoyle?"

"It's complicated, Son. Just don't worry about it." Jacob's father looked to his sister, "How many clans are around here, Linda?"

"There's two in the city," she replied, "and I think five or six in the county. Something like that."

Jacob continued staring at the gargoyles until his father patted him on the back and said, "C'mon, let's find you something else to do."

As they walked on, Jacob looked back to give a parting glance at the gargoyles and by chance his eyes met those of the yellow female. She smiled at him and casually waved. Embarrassed at being caught staring, he quickly looked away.

* * *

_Ten years later_

Since sundown he had been in his office. Now, with the second cigar of the night lit and hanging from the corner of his mouth, he closed his lighter and leaned back in his chair, exhaling the first of the cigar smoke through his nostrils. It was a filthy habit, he knew that, but the old gargoyle was too stubborn to fight the addiction, and so he allowed himself to be taken in by the tobacco's flavor as he shuffled through the files on his desk.

Under his faded-brown talons was the compiled information of twenty-five of humanity's finest examples, the finalists of a two-year-long selection process. Tonight they would find out if they would be among the ten who would make up the first human class to be admitted into Avignon's once-exclusive university for gargoyles. The final decisions were up to him.

As the leader of the Avignon clan and, by that position, the high chancellor of Avignon University, it had been his decision to admit humans into the school; and it had been a controversial decision to say the least.

A great many gargoyle clans barred their adolescents from applying, while almost every clan and federation which continued their participation sent fewer applicants; some in his own clan called for the decision to be reversed. And on his counter-species' part, human purist societies saw instant and dramatic increases in membership.

Despite the opposition which had sprung up, he remained determined. With each day humans and gargoyles became more intertwined, the races having already lived side-by-side for centuries, and to him this was the logical next step to coexistence; although he was more concerned with preserving his legacy.

He heard his clanmates whisper in the corridors about his unremarkable tenure, and the younger gargoyles openly spoke of how their reigns would be effective, a reign they figured would be soon in coming due to his age. Although he was of Constantine the Great's blood, the leader of centuries past who led the way in bringing gargoyles out of the shadows of persecution, until now he had done little that could have been considered worthy of his heritage. This, he thought, he hoped, would secure for him a high place in the history of the clan.

The gargoyle selected a file from the stack of finalists still waiting notification and flipped through the many papers within. The school had put its applicants through near-torturous examinations, mental and physical, separating and identifying the truly capable and determined applicants. The files in his possession contained as much if not more information on the applicants than they consciously knew about themselves. The gargoyle flipped through the essays, exam scores, letters of recommendation, and personal reports from observers and examiners and considered his decision.

Two things interrupted his concentration. The first was the realization that his cigar, though only recently lit, was almost spent, and the second resulted from the gentle knock on his door as he sought a replacement cigar.

"_Entrez!_" he called out.

His assistant entered the office, "_Pardon monsieur_," she said, "it is almost time to call the next finalist." Adhering to tradition, each finalist was being notified of their acceptance or rejection by a phone call at sundown. The gargoyle finalists had been notified over the course of the last week, this last night was reserved for the humans.

He nodded in acknowledgement to the young gargoyle and she went back to the front office, gently closing the door behind her. He searched for the necessary file of the applicant up for decision - after lighting his next cigar.

* * *

While the rest of the Goldberg family ate casually, Jacob hadn't made much progress on his dinner, his stomach in knots. After his mother finished serving David, Jacob's younger brother, a second helping she said, "I can wrap that up for you to have later if you want." 

"No, I'll eat," he replied. "I'm just off focus is all."

His mother smiled and said, "I don't blame you."

Jacob was not one to succumb to nervousness. At nineteen he was well over six feet tall, and his workout routine on top of the regular workout his farm duties provided came together to give him an imposing physique. But, however misleading his outward appearance, Jacob rarely resorted to using it beyond spars and chores - mostly because nobody let themselves get into a situation where he might have to - he was more interested in furthering himself than fighting others.

Throughout his life, Jacob had pushed himself to the limits of his potential and then sought to break through them. He was typically successful in his endeavors, and with each personal victory had built up a confidence and steadfastness about himself that was as solid as his frame.

But on this evening Jacob could jump at the drop of a needle.

"Son," his dad said, "why don't you go ahead and excuse yourself for now. It's okay. That call shouldn't be much longer off."

Jacob was about to respond when, as if on cue from his father, the phone rang. He and his family looked towards the kitchen phone and Jacob stood after taking a deep breath. After the phone rang a second time, and just before Jacob received the call, his father said, "Remember, you don't have to prove anything. We're proud of you."

He smiled and said, "Thanks," then picked up the phone. "Hello? Goldberg residence."

"_Bonsoir monsieur_," the soft-accented female on the other end answered. "_Je voudrais parler à Jacob, s'il vous plait_."

"Um," Jacob had to pause to recall his French, his accent was rough and not discernibly beyond that of his native voice, "_c'est de la part de Jacob_."

The female on the other end let out a short laugh and, abandoning her native tongue, said, "Please hold for one moment," and he was put on hold for the transfer. It was then that Jacob felt the eyes of his family penetrating his skin and what little comfort he had left, so he took the phone into another room.

After what felt like a minute a deep, rough male voice came on the line. "Jacob?"

"_Oui monsieur_."

There was an amused snort on the other end. "You do not need to speak French if you are not comfortable with it, my friend," the gargoyle said through his thick accent.

"You don't mind English?"

"I 'ave been speaking it longer than per'aps your parents 'ave been alive. We will be okay." There was a pause and Jacob could hear papers shuffling in the background. The gargoyle spoke again, "Are you nervous?"

"You could say that," he responded with a laugh. "I haven't been able to eat all day."

There wasn't an immediate response and the sound of shifting papers filled the delay in conversation. Eventually the gargoyle spoke sternly, "All of our 'uman applicants 'ave letters of recommendation from the leaders of their local clans. You do not. Why?"

"Because there isn't a clan in four hours of my home," Jacob replied.

"Really?"

"It's not good gargoyle country. The wind can be strong, but there's not any elevation to speak of. That's Nebraska for you."

"So 'ave you ever lived near a gargoyle clan? A federation? It seems, should I say, ridiculous for someone who 'as 'ad no interaction with our kind to want to spend six years in our company."

Jacob's heart sank. "I came across a few gargoyles when I was nine, but that was when I went to a county fair while visiting my aunt in Colorado. I guess that's when I decided to learn more about gargoyles even though I don't live near any."

"And that is all?"

"I'm a Katrien fan if that counts for anything."

"Well Jacob," the gargoyle said, shrugging off the pop-culture reference and after exhaling into the phone, "that brings us to the point of this call."

Jacob closed his eyes to anticipate the rejection.

"I need to ask you one more question."

He was caught off guard and his eyes opened reluctantly. "Oh, um, all right."

"I'm sure you've been asked this question many times by your friends and family, perhaps even to yourself, but never by us; and this question is per'aps more powerful given your proximity, or lack of it, to our kind. Jacob," he paused, "what makes you want to come to Avignon?"

Jacob took a moment to think about his response; however, he spouted out the first thing that came to mind. "Because I'm the best."

"Because you're the best?" the gargoyle echoed.

He didn't think he was going to have to answer for his arrogance, but Jacob tried to formulate a response, "When you announced two years ago that Avignon was going to open up to humans, I applied with seven other people from my school, twenty more from my town and hundreds more from my region. I beat them all - tests, spars, physical exams, I was always at the top. Then you had me go up against the other champions in my state and I beat them. Then you put me up against the other state champions, and now we're on the phone.

"With each test I realized that I was better than everybody else, everybody I had never met; so what's the point of competing with more humans? If I'm the best my species has to offer, then I want to go up against the best your species has to offer."

"And do you think you are better than us?"

"I won't know until I've had the chance to prove it."

"And if I don't give you that chance, what then?"

"Well," Jacob said while he thought on an answer, "I guess I'll move to Colorado and bug some clans out there. I don't think they'd appreciate it much, though."

Once more there was a pause in the conversation that was broken by a long exhale from the other end. "Jacob," the gargoyle said.

"Yes?"

"Session begins on the equinox. Welcome to Avignon."


	2. Arrival, Part 1

All the characters appearing in _Gargoyles_ and _Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles_ are copyright Buena Vista Television/The Walt Disney Company. No infringement of these copyrights is intended, and is not authorized by the copyright holder. All original characters are the property of "Alex Checnkov."

The Avignon University presented here is not meant in any way to represent the Universite D'Avignon and any similarities are coincidental.

* * *

**_New Horizons: Arrival, Part 1_**  
Alex Checnkov

_Three miles northeast of Saint Paul, Nebraska  
Eve of the Autumnal Equinox, 2018_:

Though only nineteen, the toll of farm living with the rigors of martial arts training made Jacob Goldberg appear older. His knuckles were deformed from punching so many hard surfaces and his skin was well tanned by many sunburns. Standing over six feet tall and muscular he was an imposing figure, but Jacob's smile and soft hazel eyes always betrayed his kinder character; excepting now as he fought with his suitcase to stuff in his jeans and short sleeved shirts.

"Are you sure you have everything?" his mother asked from the doorway for the second time since he stopped counting. "Because if you leave something, we probably won't be able to ship it for a while."

Jacob closed the locks on his suitcase and looked at the other two pieces of luggage sitting by the door. He replied to his mother, irritated, "Yes, I checked and checked again, and each time I looked I had everything. I had everything sorted yesterday, I had it packed last night and it's all still here."

"You don't have to get snippy about it. I'm just concerned."

He sighed, "I know, Mama, I'm just nervous is all. I didn't mean anything by it."

"All right, well you settle. I don't want you leaving on a sour note." Before his mother turned the conversation into a lecture, she smiled and said, "Besides, I know how you forget things. Your head'd already be in France if it wasn't screwed on."

Jacob laughed politely, a learned reaction to the joke he had heard for years. His father came into the room and grabbed the luggage sitting by the door. "Rick called about a minute ago to say he just got on the freeway, so he oughta be here in about ten minutes."

"Thanks," Jacob said. "We don't need to set those out on the porch so soon, then."

"Nah, might as well. Gotta do it sometime," and at that his father left the room, luggage in tow. Jacob's mother turned to follow as did Jacob after grabbing the last suitcase off his bed. On their way outside they passed through the living room where his younger brother, David, had taken up his usual television-watching position, lying on his belly with his face a mere six inches from the screen.

Jacob's mother was quick to notice and scolded, "David, you sit back from the TV. What'd I tell you 'bout the screen making you go blind if you get too close?"

"I wasn't gonna sit for long," David replied as he made his way to the couch, forgoing his crutches and hopping the short distance on his one leg. His voice was inflected to match his disapproval for being snapped at over a minor infraction. "Was just changing the channel was all."

"You can do that from the sofa with the remote."

His parents continued on their way, but before he followed Jacob glanced at the television to see what had caught his brother's attention. To his surprise he saw the introduction for the evening news. Curious, he leaned over his brother to ask, "Since when'd you start watching the news?"

"I was tryin' to get to cartoons when they showed your picture."

Jacob groaned and stood back up. "Sorry I asked. Keep on looking for your cartoons," he said and went out the front door. He stood there with his parents for a while, none of them having much to say that hadn't been in the last few days. Soon a cloud of dust made an appearance on the horizon and the afternoon sun reflected off the vehicle at its head.

His father shook his head and said disapprovingly, "If my truck weren't broke down, I'd never let that boy take you to the airport. Doesn't know how to keep his damned car under sixty." Before Jacob could say anything in his friend's defense his father looked to him and said, "And for all your smarts neither do you."

As Rick did whenever he came by, he sped up the farmhouse's long, dusty driveway before making a sudden stop at the porch's steps. Jacob and his parents stepped down the few stairs leading out while Rick managed to work his tall frame out of the compact car and gave them all a smile. "Mister Goldberg, Miss Goldberg," he said with a nod to the respective parent. He approached Jacob and, with a punch to his shoulder, said, "Sad Sack."

Other than being similarly tanned from farm work, Richard Green did not match up physically to Jacob in the slightest. He was short and skinny, had matted black hair with dull brown eyes and a shy personality. Regardless, the two had been friends as long as they could remember, and Rick could still raise Hell whenever he was so inclined.

Jacob punched back. "You just worry about fitting all my stuff into that pile of metal you managed to fix an engine to."

"Ain't you gonna turn your car off, Rick?" Jacob's father asked. "Just burning fuel."

"I would, sir, but then I don't know if we'd get it started again."

"Are you going to make it to the airport?" Jacob's mother asked, visibly concerned by Rick's revelation.

"Oh yes ma'am, just gotta keep the engine running," Rick replied as he struggled with Jacob's luggage.

Once everything managed to find its way into the car, Jacob's mother called towards the house, "David, get out here! Your brother's leaving." David emerged moments later, crutches tucked under his arm, and went to his father's side.

His mother said, "Well, I guess this is it." She stepped forward to hug Jacob who was quick to hug back. She laughed as her arms began to shake, "Been telling myself all day not to cry and here I go."

"Hey, Mama, I'll be all right," Jacob said. "I'll call you when I get there."

"You'd better," she managed, fighting back tears. Jacob's father stepped forward and joined in on the family hug when it became apparent that his wife wasn't going to let go of Jacob on her own, using the connection to pull her away.

David stood alone, looking at the ground in an unusual silence. Jacob knelt down and said, "What, you don't want to say anything?"

"Bye."

His father stepped in and said, "C'mon, Boy, that's all you're gonna say? Brother's going off for six months at least. I'd say a little more than that."

Rick spoke up, "Hey, I don't want to break up the goodbyes but we've gotta get going or Jacob won't be leaving at all."

Jacob patted David on the shoulder before opening the passenger door to his friend's car as Rick went around to the driver's side. "I'll call when I get in. Love you all," Jacob said.

"Drive safely, Richard," Jacob's mother called out.

"Don't worry, ma'am. I'll get 'im there in one piece."

The two teenagers took their seats in the car, and no sooner had they closed the doors than Rick put the vehicle into gear and was off. Traveling down the long driveway, Jacob rolled down the window, leaned out, looked back and waved to his family until they were out of sight.

"For the record," Rick said, "I think you're nuts."

"So you've told me at every chance," Jacob replied after he leaned back into the car and buckled his seat belt.

"I mean, you could have gone to any college you wanted, any major one that already accepts gargoyles. Instead you're going to France."

"When do you think I'm going to get another chance like this? If you haven't noticed, not a whole lot happens in this town after football season that's exciting."

"Don't knock the town, Jake. They pitched in a hell of a lot to pay your way."

When Avignon announced to the world who were the ten humans they accepted, the would-be students became celebrities in their hometowns and across the globe. For Jacob, the town celebrated his acceptance to the school by raising enough money to support him at there for the first two years, on top of saturating him with media coverage.

Before the announcement, Jacob had been outside of the state a mere five times and was only in the local paper or on the minds of the townspeople when he led his high school football team to victory.

But in the months leading up to this day he had been invited to nearly every get-together and formal event that took place within one-hundred miles of his home, mostly from high profile people he had never heard of.

The governor invited him to a cookout with state legislators; his congressman, whom he was sure his parents had never voted for and whom he never had the chance to not vote for, flew him to Washington to show him off for a weekend; he was the guest of honor at the state university's rivalry game, and the list of similar appearances went on.

Although he would never give up his seat at Avignon, the surge of attention he received often made him wish he could go back to being another nobody in another unknown Midwest town.

"I'm not knocking the people. Even they know this place is boring as all Hell."

"True enough," Rick conceded. "So, tell me again why you're doing this."

"Well, why shouldn't I? Gargoyles are as much a part of this world as we are, but we don't know a whole lot about them. I figure this is as good a chance as any to start learning."

"Oh c'mon, don't feed me that shit. We know plenty about them. And if you wanted to study gargoyles, you could have just moved to Colorado or Wyoming. They got good schools, gargoyles and are close to home. Seriously, why do you want to go so much?"

Jacob looked over, "What's with trying to keep me around all of a sudden?"

"Hey, it's your life," Rick said in quick defense. "All I'm saying is that I don't think you've ever told me why you want to go all the way to France. Hell, you didn't speak a word of French until a year ago."

"Well, again, I'm never going to have another opportunity like this, and I'm just going where it takes me."

Rick sighed and said with resignation, "Fine, but I'm hoping it doesn't take you too far from where you need to be."

Jacob raised an eyebrow and echoed, "From where I need to be? Where exactly do I 'need' to be?"

"How about home for starters. Your dad's going to have to hire an extra hand with you gone."

"Dad will be fine. We talked a lot about the farm when I was applying to the school, to schools in general. He said my being gone wouldn't be a problem." Jacob looked over at his friend, "But I don't think my going to France is what you were getting at."

Rick hesitated and said after some visible consideration, "No."

"What's on your mind?"

"Listen, you know I've got nothing against gargoyles…"

Jacob interrupted with a frustrated groan, "Shit, not this again."

"C'mon, hear me out."

"Has your dad been talking down on gargoyles again?"

John Green, Rick's father, often spoke ill of gargoyles in reflecting on his past experiences with the species.

"He's _always_ talking down on gargoyles."

Before moving out to Nebraska, John had been in his family's livestock and tobacco businesses in southwestern Virginia, a location which kept him in close proximity to a number of gargoyle clans. For years he and his family hadn't had problems living alongside gargoyles as they rarely interacted. But on one summer night, John stumbled on a group of adolescent gargoyles looking for a tobacco fix without wanting to wait for the plant's processing, much less wanting to pay for it.

He never had a chance to defend himself.

During John's three week stay in the hospital, the Green family and the Bureau of Gargoyle Affairs searched for the gargoyles responsible for his injuries. When they were located, their parent clan and its benefactors were quick to offer a settlement, which the majority of the Green family accepted. John, however, was unwilling to settle the matter.

Upon recovering and executing the offending gargoyles' punishment, as he was so invited to do by the clan leadership as part of the settlement to ensure the sentence's full enforcement, John sought a place in the country that was both devoid of gargoyles and where he could still make a living.

His distance from gargoyles meant that only his slanted conceptions of the race informed his opinions about them, and those slanted opinions eventually grew to into unrelenting bigotry.

"But that's not important right now. Hear me out."

Jacob sighed, "All right."

"Like I was saying, I've got nothing against gargoyles. Pop hasn't worn me down on that. But I think he's right in that we shouldn't, you know, be living together." Jacob jumped to interrupt but Rick continued, "Not that we can't live _near_ each other, but gargoyles aren't in our houses, and we aren't in their clans.

"I was even hearing it on the national radio a couple of days back. There was a _gargoyle_, a clan leader come to think of it, talking about how bad this all was, and how humans and gargoyles were getting too close for either one's good. I think you're, I don't know, disturbing a balance by going to this school."

Jacob waited until he was sure his friend had finished then responded, "Well, fair enough, but I guess I'm just going to have to prove all that wrong."

"While you're on that crusade, just be sure to watch your back. I'm sure there are plenty of folks who want you to fail."

* * *

_New Amsterdam, New York_: 

Sophie snapped the last latches on the bag and set it on the floor with the rest of her luggage. She checked the list of items the school recommended she bring to make sure each item had been double checked prior to packing. Finding everything in order, Sophie folded the checklist and tucked it into a pouch on her carry-on bag.

She was a silver-skinned gargoyle with blue hair that flowed past her shoulders, her brow giving way to a pair of horns that curled behind her ears. Wearing her favorite plaid camp shirt and jean shorts which ended at her knee spurs, she reclined on the daybed in her room and looked out the window past her daytime roost into the evening cityscape.

Although night had fallen, New Amsterdam was still very much awake. The streets were full of activity, no building had fallen dark as workers stayed at their offices late into the night and others arrived home to their apartments. With the city's gargoyles awake, even the sky showed signs of life; familiar silhouettes glided about, their natural stealth deceived by purple strobes they were required to wear for gliding in the city.

Nestled among the humans' many skyscrapers were the island's four guild towers, home to most of the thousands of gargoyles who occupied the city, and the steel frame of a fifth rose out of the island's southern end; and, like each tower before, it challenged the height and engineering potential of the time.

The humans, in desperate attempts to maintain their sense of superiority, had surrounded each tower with buildings of comparable height. The constant race for domination of the sky had resulted in a city on a scale that almost overwhelmed its inhabitants.

Sophie tried not to think about how long it might be before she would again be privileged to the view, but her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Come in."

Nicholas, her rookery brother, opened the door and asked, "Are you ready?" She nodded. "Great," he said as he stepped into the room. "What can I get?"

"Take these two," she said, carrying the heavier pieces of luggage to him, "and I'll get the other two and the carry-on."

"Okay," Nicholas said as he took the bags. "Let's go."

Sophie offered a weak smile as she slung the carry-on's strap around her neck and shoulder before lifting the last two pieces of luggage and walking out of her room. She turned and paused to give her familiar surroundings one last look before turning off the lights and closing the door, locking it for a length of time she didn't know.

Nicholas had long been the object of her affection, indeed he was the object of many of his sisters' affections. He was one of the taller and stronger males of their generation, with deep red skin and long blonde hair which, in the immediate years before his entry into the police academy, he had dyed with streaks of orange and red to give himself a fiery mane.

As the young gargoyles headed down the corridor towards the elevator bay Nicholas asked, "Did you say all your goodbyes?"

"I saw pretty much everybody at the party last night and caught the others before sunrise."

The clan had organized a going away party for her, which attracted most of the residents in her guild tower. While the party had lasted most of the night, it was only hers and the generation above that had the stamina to stay through it.

Sophie had spent most of the party trying to coax Nicholas away for a more personal farewell, but he hadn't responded to her advances. The best she could get from him was his promise to help see her off, which he was dutifully fulfilling at the moment.

Her brother's hesitation frustrated Sophie, as she was under frequent pressure from other potential suitors. She, while not able to lay claim to being the fairest of her sisters, was no eye-sore, and as she climbed the ranks within her clan she knew she could have her pick of most males for a partner.

But Sophie was stubborn and kept her eyes set on Nicholas.

They came to the elevator bay, called a car and were soon up at the pre-flight station. In front of the elevator bay was a floor-to-ceiling window and sliding glass door that looked out towards the west, while flanking them were walls thinly decorated by old posters. On the south wall were two monitors, one displayed various anemometric data while the other showed weather alerts and the night's forecast. Below that was a control pad for the launch rail on the roof. Along the opposite wall were rows of gliding packs - a transponder, beacon light and radio - and accompanying headsets.

Sophie hated the packs. Other than being cumbersome, for her they represented humans imposing themselves on gargoyles. She could vaguely remember from her younger years when the skies were open, when a gargoyle could take to the air and glide at will. However, following two incidents within a year of planes entering well-known gargoyle airspace and almost coming into contact with gargoyles, the Bureau of Gargoyle Affairs and the National Aviation Administration, rather than urge for human pilots to be punished for their errors, required gargoyles in urban centers to wear these packs and adhere to gliding regulations.

However, not wanting to cost her clan several-thousand dollars should she be seen landing at the airport without a pack, she donned one.

Nicholas, donning his own pack, scanned the monitors and said, "Eleven knots outside coming from the west, and updraft's at six knots. Roads must still be hot. Want to go for a running start or a launch?"

"Launch," she replied. "It'll be hard to get a good run with this luggage."

Nicholas nodded as he looked over their cargo. "All right, give me a second to configure the platform."

The launch system used by Sophie's and most all urban gargoyle clans was little more than a large, pneumatic catapult, a system valued by gargoyles in light winds and short takeoff distances. Clans sometimes would use it for hatchlings who during gliding lessons didn't quite take to the idea of running off a tall building's roof. After reluctant hatchlings were shot off a building in the arms of a teacher, the theory went, they would prefer to take to the air on their own power from then on; yet in practice, however, many hatchlings who underwent a launch feared gliding for weeks, as was the case when Sophie received the treatment.

Younger gargoyles frequently got into trouble for launching various objects never meant for flight. Nicholas and some of his brothers had to perform community service for launching tomatoes they had taken from the tower's kitchen after one hit a national prosecutor half a mile away. Yet what upset Nicholas and his brothers more than their punishment was their denial of the world record for a tomato's flight since they did not start their launches at ground level.

Once Nicholas entered the necessary information into the system's computer via the console, the ceiling rumbled as the launch platform rotated into the wind and hissed as the system's tanks compressed air to the necessary pressure.

The gargoyles left the control station for the roof where they arrived in time to see the launch platform lock into place. The two walked up to the small, open elevator that carried passengers to the catapult rail, elevated twenty feet above the roof and spanning its length, where Nicholas held a hand out, grinned and insisted, "Ladies first."

Sophie smiled and nodded in response as she walked past him. She stepped onto the platform, made sure her luggage was securely on as well, and pressed the button to ascend. The lift, long overdue for maintenance, lurched up before climbing slowly, shaking with each inch.

Once at the catapult, Sophie made the short trip down the catwalk to the end of the rail and the waiting launch panel. The panel had one red button with "Launch" carved into it, the other green and declaring "Recover," and a timer that awaited her input. Sophie allowed herself fifteen seconds to prepare and, once she made the entry, the launch button illuminated. She pressed it, and the clock began to count down.

Sophie hurried onto the carrier platform set at the end of the rail and knelt with wings partially extended while keeping her hands firmly around the luggage handles. As the countdown entered its final seconds, each tick received a high-pitched tone until, at zero, there was a long buzz that was followed by a hiss of compressed air escaping its containers' valves to launch the platform forward.

The ride was smooth and quick. Once the platform neared the end of the rail Sophie opened her wings in full, caught the wind and climbed into the night.

She looked back and watched Nicholas arrive at the catwalk to recall the platform for his launch. Sophie flipped on the beacon of her glide pack, its purple strobe giving away her position in the night sky, and then called over the radio, "New Amsterdam Control, Golf Victor airborne over marker Whiskey Five Two with intent to enter general airspace."

After a few moments delay a female's voice responded, "Whiskey Five Two, squawk niner zero one eight and designate Golf Victor November Beta Six."

Sophie dialed in the assigned numbers to her transponder and replied, "November Beta Six copy, squawking niner zero one eight."

Sophie circled over her home and waited for Nicholas to launch. She looked about the night sky and saw a number of purple strobes off in the distance, the sign other gargoyles going about their business. For all that Sophie disliked about the gliding packs she and her kind were forced to wear in their native medium above their homes, their private radio band offered some welcome opportunities.

"Beta Six, this is Alpha Seven, are you goin' off to cross tails with the French?"

"Alpha Seven, Beta Six. Yes, Chris, I'm on my way out."

Chris was a friend of hers from one of the city's independent clans who, unlike Nicholas, was never shy about showing his interest in females, and Sophie was often the target of his advances. She counted him as a potential suitor should she ever give up on Nicholas.

"Got time for a drink before you go?"

"Only if you catch me at the airport bar."

"Ah, I think I'm going to have to pass. I'm northbound. Well, good luck to you. Give 'em hell. Seven, out."

Once Chris signed off, Nicholas announced his launch over the radio, "New Amsterdam Control, Golf Victor airborne over point Whiskey Five Two with intent to enter general airspace," and climbed to meet Sophie.

"Whiskey Five Two, squawk niner zero two zero and designate flight Golf Victor November Charlie One."

"November Charlie One copy, squawking niner zero two zero." Nicholas got off the radio and called over to Sophie, "You got your bags okay?"

"Just fine. You?"

"I'm all right. Let's go." The two dipped their wings and turned south towards the airport. The glide was long and, for the most part, silent, broken only by the occasional radio calls to the airspace controllers for directions to stay clear of human traffic.

After a while they saw the airport lights on the horizon and began to glide in. Nicholas called on the radio, "King International Approach, Golf Victor November Charlie One, squawking niner zero two zero, coming in from the north and in need of glide path."

"November Charlie One," a male responded, "I see you on my screen, illuminating tonight's glide path. Look for it on your right. Approach, out."

"Thank you. One, out."

The two gargoyles followed the lights to the airport until they felt comfortable enough to land at the terminal on their own direction. They glided low to scan the terminal entrances for the appropriate airline entrance and landed when they saw their destination.

Nicholas handed Sophie her bags and said, "Well, I guess you're all set."

"Yeah. This is it," she replied with a weak smile. Nicholas took a step forward and hugged her. Sophie quickly reciprocated, resting her head on his chest. "I'm going to miss you so much."

"We'll all miss you, too, but we know you'll make us proud."

Sophie looked up at him, "That's not what I said." Nicholas raised his brow in curiosity and she placed a hand on his cheek, "I said 'I'm going to miss _you_,' Nick."

"You don't like everybody else?" he joked.

"I do! I like all our brothers and sisters, and I'll miss them. It's just," she paused to search for the words that had to come next. Unable to find them quickly, she moved her hand from his cheek and stroked his hair with affection. "It's just that you're special to me," she finally managed. "You always have been."

Nicholas was taken aback by her candor. "Oh. Wow," was all he could say in response and, in his state of surprise, dropped his hands from her.

Sophie's optimism faded at his reaction and she took a step back from him. "I'm sorry." She looked down at her feet, "I didn't want to leave without saying it."

"No, I'm - I'm glad you did." Sophie looked up from the ground and waited for more, as surely he had more to say, but Nicholas was reluctant to push further, rubbing the back of his neck and looking in all directions but in hers while he formulated a response.

She was determined to get answers. Sophie stepped forward, placed her hands on his cheeks and turned his head so his eyes could only look at hers. "I want to know. It's okay if, you know, but just tell me."

Nicholas sighed and placed his hands over hers, guiding them away. Sophie's heart sank for a moment but was startled when he leaned forward to rest his brow against hers; the unexpected contact sent a pulse through her, shutting her eyes and exiting from the end of her tail, forcing it to lash against the ground.

He brought a hand up to stroke her hair, and she tilted her head so that their noses rubbed. They were not more than a hair away from a kiss, but that small space between them was more electric than a summer storm It must have been, for it felt to Sophie that her hair was standing on its end.

She didn't know how long they stayed like that, she expected him to say more and, perhaps, she thought, he was expecting the same from her, though it seemed that nothing more needed to be said. But after some time he admitted, "You are very dear to me, but I don't think I'm ready for this, especially not with you going away for so long."

Though each small breath that accompanied his words felt soft as they brushed past her lips, and the deep pitch of his voice was soothing, those words stung her.

"Will you be ready at all? Ever?" She opened her eyes and saw that he was looking right at her, no signs of hesitation or reluctance, and the two youths were locked together. When he took too long to respond, she tried to look past him and into his intentions, his thoughts, but couldn't.

Nicholas placed his hands on her cheek, lowered her head and kissed the bridge of her nose. He might have left his reply at that alone, but as he began to pull away Sophie threw her arms about him and brought him in for a kiss.

His body pulled away as his wings snapped back in surprise, but she kept him close, encouraging his response.

Nicholas put up no further resistance.

* * *

Jacob's family had purchased coach tickets for this flight, but someone had taken the liberty to upgrade him to first class. Unfortunately, whoever the kind person was hadn't upgraded the ticket on the first leg of his trip, leaving him an arm-length from the lavatory, and Jacob was aware of the stench which clung to him. 

He had been at the gate for little more than an hour and was growing bored and impatient. Though he had laid out books to read for the flight the night he packed, he recalled now that he packed them in his checked luggage instead of his carry-on.

Before Jacob turned his gaze out the window, he caught Sophie's entrance to the gate. Her wings were caped, carry-on bag slung across her chest and secured under her arm. He watched as she scanned the aisles of chairs for a seat and settled on one across from a family. She glanced at her watch before digging through her bag.

Though grabbed by his first gargoyle encounter in ten years, he broke his stare so as not to be rude and turned back around to resume contemplating the enormity of the plane before him. It wasn't long before a child began to cry and Jacob heard a woman's voice from some rows back, "Excuse me, could you move, please?"

Jacob along with several others turned to see what the disturbance was. He couldn't see anything apparent, though noted the agitated child was among the family seated before Sophie.

"Excuse me?" Sophie asked, brow raised.

"Could you move?" the mother asked again. "You're frightening my son."

Sophie looked confused and, after exchanging glances with some other passengers, including some with children who were not making a fuss, said, "I'm just sitting here. Would it be too difficult for maybe _you_ to move?"

"We were here first. I don't mean to be rude; we're from Ohio and there aren't any gargoyles there. I don't know how to explain you to him."

"'It's okay, she's just a gargoyle' while cradling it could be a good place to start."

"'_It_' is a _he_," the father protested. "You don't need to be rude with us, just move."

"I don't have to! And how is telling your wife how to teach tolerance being rude?"

"Do you want us to get security? Someone call security!" the father shouted.

"No! Fine, I'll move," she relented. Sophie stood and walked away from the family. "You didn't need to make a case out of it," she hissed.

With Sophie's departure, the mother took action to calm her child, "It's okay. It's gone, now."

Sophie walked over and took a seat next to Jacob. Before returning to her book she looked at him and asked, "I'm not going to scare you, am I?"

"Not unless you try," he responded with a smile. He extended a hand to her, "Jacob Goldberg."

"Sophie," she said, taking his hand and giving it a quick shake before pulling back. Although she looked like she had a light frame, Jacob could feel the superior strength of her kind present in even that slight exchange.

He thought to strike up a conversation, but she was clearly flustered from the exchange with the Ohio family. So he left her alone while he carried on with his own musings and, during which, he further recalled that his reading materials were not checked, but rather were still in his bookcase at home.

* * *

Night had fallen in earnest outside the airplane, some few hundred miles south of Greenland according to the route tracker on the screen in front of him. The attendants had distributed meals a while earlier, and all the other passengers in first class had retired for the flight - except for Sophie who, seated next to him, was engaged in her book. 

In preparation for Avignon and having to live on the gargoyles' nocturnal schedule, Jacob had spent the last few months training himself to stay awake throughout the night. What Jacob could never fully overcome, however, was the boredom and feeling of isolation that came with nighttime living in a daytime-dependent, sparsely populated region. His friends could sometimes keep him company through the first few hours of night, usually until the bars closed, but more often than not he was on his own. And now, with his books back at home, Jacob had nothing with which he could occupy his time.

Once more he put on the headphones that, despite his first class ticket, he had to purchase for three dollars, a discount for first class passengers, and flipped through the various music channels provided by the airline. Yet, as he had discovered just ten minutes earlier, there was nothing on that suited his tastes. Jacob, again, tried the few television channels available and was similarly disappointed.

Jacob set the screen back to the route tracker and stowed the headphones. He looked around the cabin at the sleeping passengers and hoped that the sedated mood might help him drift off, but he had no such luck.

With the view outside nothing more than darkness, he ended up focused on Sophie, trying to understand how a form so alien to what he knew could also feel so terrestrial to him.

In doing so he got a lesson in gargoyles' superior field of vision. "You're doing it again," Sophie said without looking up.

Jacob turned away, "Sorry. Just bored is all."

"You could try going to sleep."

"I'm not tired. And, anyway, that'd screw up my internal clock."

Sophie looked over at him. "Wouldn't being awake all night kind count as your internal clock being screwed up? Being human and everything."

"Probably," Jacob mused. "But it's a necessary evil. I've been training myself to survive it for the last few weeks."

"What possessed you to do that?"

He hesitated. "Well, I'm going to be spending a lot of time with gargoyles for a while and, well, I have to keep pace." Sophie raised her brow, quietly asking for further explanation. "I'm, um, one of the 'Avignon Ten,' as we're being called."

Sophie's reaction was what Jacob had feared and the reason why he had not mentioned the purpose of his trip sooner. She turned away in a kind of daze, as though in shock, then let out a frustrated sigh, then a muted growl and closed her eyes, though not fast enough for Jacob to miss a flash of crimson. She pinched the bridge of her nose and, after a few tense moments of controlling her anger, suppressing a snarl or two, laughed. "That's beautiful. Of all the people I could sit next to, first a family of bigots and now a damned _sapper_."

* * *

They hadn't spoken the remainder of the flight. 

Jacob stared out the window while Sophie tried to focus on her book, but she was too upset to get past more than a few pages. Eventually she put the romance novel away for another night and brooded. Her hope had been to avoid the sappers, the humans who were infiltrating the last bastion of gargoyle heritage, as long as possible, but that hope had been shattered.

Sophie didn't hate humans, she had no reason to. But the species' constant intrusions on her kind made it very difficult to like them at least; and their invasion of Avignon was the last straw for her. She had grown up hoping to go to the gargoyles-exclusive school to learn more about her own kind without the interferences and distortions of humanity.

Even if it had been the gargoyle chancellor's decision, he was under pressure from the school's human benefactors, whose millions of dollars allowed gargoyles to attend without risking their clans' finances. She knew they had long insisted on having human membership, and that they must have conspired to threaten the school with bankruptcy if they didn't finally have their way.

She was startled out of her thoughts by a hand on her shoulder and turned to look at the person responsible. "Excuse me, ma'am," the young, male flight attendant said, "but we'll be entering daylight in a few minutes. If you'll please come with me, I'll get you squared away."

Sophie glanced out the window to see that the sky had become a familiar pre-dawn grey, accented by faint streaks of red and orange along the horizon. It was then that she felt fatigued and knew sleep was not too far off.

She stood, took her bag from the overhead bin and followed the flight attendant aft, past the many rows of sleeping passengers to the crew cabin. The attendant called the service elevator, used normally for transporting the food cart between levels, the two stepped into the car and descended to the cargo deck.

Farther back in the plane, Sophie was shown to a padded compartment with a single, padded seat, bolted into the wall and without arm rests. Sophie wondered if for flights without gargoyles the room was used for criminals and insane or unruly passengers as it looked to be straight from an asylum.

"Have a seat, keep your wings caped, cross your arms and make sure your tail isn't wrapped around anything," the human instructed, and she complied. He reached over her shoulders and pulled down a set of belts that crossed over her chest before locking.

The attendant pulled on the straps and asked, "Too tight?" She shook her head.

"Great. Well, sun'll be up soon, and we'll take care of you from there."

"Thank you." As the attendant turned to leave, she asked, "Um, has there ever been any, uh, 'chipping' in this process? I've seen how some airlines handle bags, so - you know."

The attendant smiled. "We and our somnio shuttle services have a flawless record. No dings, chips or scrapes."

"Good to know," she said, relieved.

He continued, "Only losses we've had are when the plane's gone down, but at least they were asleep when it happened." He chuckled, "That's more than can be said for the folks up top."

Sophie looked at him with eyes wide in utter disbelief that he would say something like that, and humorously. The human cleared his throat and, after some stuttering, said, "Thank you for flying Pan Global. Sleep well," and left the compartment.

She shook her head and thought of filing a complaint, but dismissed the thought. She yawned and looked out the window just as the morning's first rays of sunlight came in, ushering in her sleep.

* * *

_Avignon, France_: 

The bus navigated the narrow, winding streets of the old city to arrive at the school's front gate. The sudden stop brought Jacob out of his sleep and he exited the vehicle to help the driver unload his bags from the bus' hold.

With everything in order, Jacob tipped the driver and walked up to a small guardhouse at the university's iron gate which, like the stone walls, was too high for Jacob to see past and into the campus, leaving only the towers of the Palace of the Popes visible. The guard, short but imposing, left the guardhouse and with his hand held out and up said, "_Pardon, monsieur, est-ce que vous avez rendez-vous_?"

"_Non_," he replied, "I'm a student here. I'm supposed to arrive today."

The guard went back to his station and flipped through some papers. After a few moments he said through an open window, "Let me see your identification." Jacob handed him his passport and a letter the school sent out.

Once the guard was satisfied, he returned Jacob's passport and went to open the gate. "Have a good day, sir," he said as Jacob walked past.

"Thank you, you too."

Once inside the school's complex, Jacob was amazed by what he saw.

Jacob had entered the campus from the south, and starting sixty feet to his east and west were the main walls, each fifteen feet high and at least six-hundred feet long as they enclosed the campus from the south gate all the way to the Rhone River.

The campus of Avignon University greeted him with a garden, planned by Pope Urban the Fifth almost seven-hundred years earlier, that spanned from the east wall to the west, at most one-hundred fifty feet deep and three-hundred feet across. The garden was cut in half by a walkway that led from the gate to the former papal seat with a number of lesser walkways branching off to other points in the garden.

The old seat of the Papacy, now the university's primary academic building, was a massive structure, improved many times during the centuries of the French papacy before it was handed over to the gargoyles' custody. The Gothic palaces' walls, easily fifteen feet thick, looked as though it had come from the Earth itself. Towers forty feet high guarded the palaces' entrances, incorporated into the western wall. With a total area comparable to four gothic cathedrals, the palace complex was the focus of the campus.

Beyond the palace were the parade grounds where the students would soon be honing their combat skills; and past the field the terrain became cragged as it neared the Rhone. Atop this hilled area Jacob could make out the dormitories, one Gothic from the founding of the school back in the sixteenth century, the other looking newer but in an old style.

His luggage in tow, Jacob walked past the palace towards the hill, and once past the palace he could see more of the parade grounds where, blocked from his earlier view, a motor pool of vans had gathered, unloading their cargo of sleeping gargoyles.

Directing the unloading process was a short, slim and well-kept brunette in a suit who, though she was speaking too fast for Jacob to fully understand, he gathered was emphasizing the need for the crews to be careful with the new students, punctuating her directions with threats.

Cautiously he approached her and, when she got a break from yelling at the work crews, said, "_Pardon, madam_, I'm looking for registration."

"And you are?" she asked with suspicion.

"Jacob Goldberg. The letter the school sent out said registration was today."

"It opens tonight, yes, but I can get you into your room now. Goldberg, you said?"

"Yes."

The woman flipped through her clipboard and said, "Constantine 417," then turned to a stack of boxes where, after some searching, she pulled out a set of keys and handed them to him. "Constantine Hall is the building to your right when you reach the top of the hill," she directed before returning her attention to the crews handling the gargoyles.

"Thanks," he said and carried on his way.

Jacob's luggage helped the trek up to the dormitories become an arduous affair as he climbed a great number of stairs - he felt bad for the crews bringing up the sleeping gargoyles. Once atop the hill, Jacob looked north to take in the vista presented to him of the Rhone and the hills beyond.

The dorms flanked his view. To his left was the newest building, Urban Hall, modern in its design and making the attempt not to clash with the medieval architecture surrounding it. The limestone walls made it look native to the rocks around the city, and the building's pointed arches over the doorways and windows as well as stubby flying buttresses along the outer walls were done to mimic the Gothic style. However, the building's single-paned windows, modern-styled balconies, a penthouse complex on the roof and its walls too thin to possibly support the weight of the rock on their own all told that a steel skeleton was at work behind the rock, which itself lacked many fingerprints of weathering like the city's older structures.

On Jacob's right was his new home. Truly Gothic in construction, Constantine Hall looked like a cathedral in miniature, right down to its cross-like footprint and high towers. Elaborate flying buttresses and columns lined the outer walls, which showed the wear of centuries of weathering, and were interrupted by grand windows with perches at their bases for the gargoyles' daylight slumber.

Inside, however, modern renovations were plain. Though the lobby and main hallway still showed the structure's vaulted ceiling and grand columns, inner walls had been built over the years to partition the structure into a more fitting housing complex, lessening the inner grandeur that Jacob had expected from the outside view. A building map in the lobby showed him that his room was at the top of the northeast tower.

Walking back there Jacob noticed a gym and lounge with signs indicating a computer center and food area on the west side of the dorm. He climbed the tower's staircase and when at the top floor saw that the tower floor, like the main building, had been partitioned by drywall to accommodate multiple residents. Jacob walked to the end of the makeshift hallway to a window facing north, where in the distance and to the east he saw Mont Ventoux, a sentry for the French Alps not too far away.

Turning around he took the few steps to his door, his room taking up the east side of the tower, and unlocked it. Inside he found a bed, small desk with a lamp and bookshelf on the north wall, all barren. On the south wall was a couch, and similar furnishings, but they had been decorated and filled, evidence that his roommate had arrived. Jacob dropped his luggage on the stripped mattress and approached his roommate's wall where a vast array of pictures had been taped up.

Eager to get a glimpse of his roommate, details of whom the school refused to disclose ahead of time, Jacob approached the wall to examine the pictures.

In one, a green male gargoyle with platinum hair and dressed in a hide vest and red loincloth smiled as he held close a blue female gargoyle with black hair and long horns wearing a white tunic with silver trim; in another, the same male was surrounded by three other males over the corpse of a recently-killed deer; and in another still, the male was alone, sitting with his legs crossed and a stern face dressed in far more elaborate clothes and holding a decorated spear.

Jacob looked away from the pictures and to the room's window where on the southern perch, overlooking the city of Avignon and the mountain peaks beyond, with claws raised, wings extended and bearing his fangs, in stone slept the human's gargoyle roommate.

_To be continued_


	3. Arrival, Part 2

All the characters appearing in _Gargoyles_ and _Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles_ are copyright Buena Vista Television/The Walt Disney Company. No infringement of these copyrights is intended, and is not authorized by the copyright holder. All original characters are the property of "Alex Checnkov."

The Avignon University presented here is not meant in any way to represent the Universite D'Avignon and any similarities are coincidental.

* * *

**_New Horizons: Arrival, Part II_**  
Alex Checnkov

Jacob had barely gotten the sheets on his bed before he crashed, his body not at all accustomed to the pressures of transoceanic travel. It was a dreamless sleep as even his brain was too tired to make any effort to conjure dreams.

Wearing only his shirt and boxer shorts, he might very well have continued to sleep through the rest of the day and into the night, but a knocking at his door stirred him awake. "Come in," he said into his pillow.

The person at his door knocked again.

He turned over and repeated himself, "Come in." Then, remembering where he was, said, "_Entrez_."

Jacob rolled over on his back and sat up to face the door and the person entering. In stepped a male, by his sleep-impaired guess at least a foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter than him, with long brown hair tied back into a pony tail and pasty white skin. "_Monsieur Goldberg_?"

"_Oui_," he said, sitting up to greet his guest.

"I am Pierre Dumont, one of your schoolmates," he said with a broad smile and hand extended.

Jacob sat up in bed, took his hand and replied, "Jacob Goldberg, it's good to meet you."

"I came here to bring you to a late lunch. Our other human friends have arrived and we thought we should get to know each other before the session starts. But, since I am sure you have traveled a long way, I can understand if you would like to continue to sleep."

"No," Jacob replied, "it would be good to meet them before school starts. Just give me a moment to wake up."

"Of course."

Jacob moved to the edge of the bed and, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, asked, "So, where are you from?"

"I am from Avignon."

"Oh yeah? So do you get to stay at home?"

"No, I must live on campus. It is required. Even the representative of the Avignon clan must live here."

Jacob stood, grabbed his discarded pants from the edge of the bed and donned them. "That must be strange having to be that close to home and not be allowed to live there."

"Yes, but I think it will be a good thing."

"We can hope." Jacob slipped into his shoes and said, "Okay, let's go meet the others."

They left the dormitory for the courtyard between Constantine and Urban halls that hugged the cliff's edge. Assembled around a pair of benches that looked out over the Rhone were the other eight human students, engaged in light conversation, who acknowledged Jacob and Pierre with waves and various greetings.

"I have found the last of us," Pierre said as they approached the group.

The first of his classmates Jacob met was a woman about his age, shorter than him but taller than Pierre, well figured with dark hair and deeply tanned. "Aitana Moraes-Ribeiro, from Brazil," she said with a hint of her native accent.

"Jacob Goldberg, Nebraska. Glad to meet you," he replied and, upon shaking her hand, found that like Sophie her smooth figure disguised her true strength.

"Mai Ling," introduced herself next with a delicate handshake. "I am from China." She was fair skinned, thin, had long black hair and was almost a full foot shorter than Jacob.

Jacob felt a hand on his left shoulder and turned, finding himself looking into a pair of dark eyes set into an equally dark face. The male was on par with Jacob by apparent weight and muscle mass, but also like Jacob his menacing figure was broken by a broad smile. "Imaran Kedlaya, Sindhustan," he said while shaking Jacob's hand, his French deeply accented by his native tongue. "It is good to meet you."

"Same here," Jacob replied.

Standing next to Imaran was another male, a few inches shorter and noticeably older than either him or Jacob yet with an overall physique comparable to either of them. "Loren Duceppe, Canada," he said.

"Oh yeah? Where? I have a cousin living in Vancouver."

"Other side of the country. I'm from Montreal."

"Ah."

Jacob returned his attention to the benches and the remaining classmates. Wearing a red hijab and clothing noticeably more modest than the others, a woman a few inches shorter than him stood briefly to introduce herself. "Shamara al-Khiam, from Lebanon."

"Happy to meet you."

Remaining seated and reaching over the back of the bench to shake his hand, blonde and athletic-looking, the next classmate introduced herself, "Sylvie Noel."

"From?"

"Paris."

Standing beside Sylvie was a dark skinned and black haired male, also the shortest of the group. Though he must have been around Jacob's age, the sun had clearly taken its toll on his skin, aging him by perhaps a decade. It wasn't a second after Sylvie had released Jacob's hand than he grabbed it. "Paz Manuel, I am from Chile," he said almost without expression.

"Good to meet you."

When Jacob was able to free his hand from Paz's grip, a deeply tanned woman with waist-long black hair standing next to Paz extended her hand. "Osyka Humma, Choctaw Nation."

"Choctaw? In the Oklahoma Territories, right?"

Though she gave a slight laugh, her smile faded and she said, "What you call the land is your business, but it is not your country's '_territory_,' it is my _nation_."

A silence fell over the group as Jacob let her hand go to scratch the back of his neck. Loren coughed and said, "Now that we are all introduced and the first faux pas has been committed, how about we go find something to eat?"

* * *

Pierre led the group to a sidewalk café not more than a few blocks from the campus, still inside the old city walls and where the tops of the palace's towers were still plainly visible. 

Most of the ice-breaking conversation had been typical topics – family, occupations and the like – and for the most part Jacob found his new classmates to be amiable. But, as it was expected to do, the conversation turned to one important topic. "_Pourquoi sommes-nous ici_?" Imaran asked. "Are we all very brave or very stupid?"

"If you asked the gargoyles back home," Loren said, "and my parents, they would say both." The others laughed and nodded, all having heard the same thing themselves at some point over the last two years.

When the laughter settled down, Loren continued, "I was at a movie about two years ago with my girlfriend, some Hollywood crap – oh, yes, 'Thermopylae.' Did anybody else see that junk?"

"Yes, it was horrible," Imaran said with a laugh. "But please, get on with the story."

"Right. So, I'm there with my girlfriend of the time and sitting behind us are two unbelievably annoying gargoyles. They're making all kinds of stupid jokes, saying humans could never have fought off that many soldiers for that long, that the Spartans must have been gargoyles, and so on.

"While the movie was entertaining in the way a train wreck is, I was getting really bothered by those two. Then they got on the subject about how humans were being let into Avignon and how we could never match up; so, I turned right around and said, 'When I come back from there, I'm going to show you how I learned to tie knots in gargoyle tails if you don't shut up.'"

The others laughed and Jacob said, "I would be nervous for you, but you're sitting here so things must have worked out."

"I don't think a human had ever talked trashed them before," Loren said with a smile. "They shut right up they were so stunned. Of course, I spent the rest of the movie being scared that at any moment a row of talons was going to come across my neck, so I had to go back in a week to see it for real.

"But worse than having to sit through that movie again, my girlfriend was so impressed that I had both shut up two gargoyles and applied to the school that she went and told everyone, and I mean _everyone_. So, in order to not be a liar, I _actually_ applied. Now here I am."

"You're here because of a girl you're no longer with and because you trash talked some gargoyles?" Jacob asked.

Loren took a sip of his coffee and said, "Pretty much. That and I was bored with studying mechanical engineering and physics. I thought this would be a good change of pace."

"You are aware that the school specializes in engineering, yes?" Imaran asked.

"Yeah, but we also become masters in martial arts. That was not part of my degree program in Montreal, I assure you." After finishing off his coffee he asked, "What about you, Imaran? It was your question."

"That is true. There are gargoyles all over the mountains near my home, and I am friends with many of them. When this opportunity came, it felt like something I had to do, so I could understand the ways of my friends better."

"I am like him," Mai said. "My father is a teacher to the gargoyles near my home, like his father and grandfather were. When we heard that this school it would admit humans, my father told me that I should come here to be taught by gargoyles, to see what we could learn from them."

She smiled, "He said it like he knew I would get in from the beginning, but I suppose he was right."

"Sorry to change the conversation, but I'm curious," Jacob said. "Did all of you grow up around gargoyles?" The others exchanged glances of curiosity, as though they could not understand the question, before looking back at him and nodding. "Oh."

"Did you not?" Osyka asked.

"No. There aren't any gargoyles in Nebraska."

"Then why did you come here?" Sylvie asked.

Jacob took a moment to think about his answer then said, "I first saw gargoyles when I was nine, and from there I was, I don't know how to say it in French - _spellbound_.

"I spent the next few years trying to learn as much about them as possible, talking about them at every chance I could get. If I wasn't an athlete, I know I would have been cast aside as a nerd. When this school opened its doors to us, everybody told me I should apply – not that I needed convincing.

"Once the competitions started and I kept winning, I realized this was something I really should be doing; I felt that I _should_ be here. So I kept at it, and here I am."

"So when was the next time you saw gargoyles? When you asked a clan leader for a recommendation?" Loren asked.

"No, it was on one of the flights I took yesterday."

"Then how were you recommended?" Pierre asked.

"I wasn't – not by a gargoyle anyway. The form said that letter was optional for humans." The others groaned in almost near unison before starting up on how they almost were reduced to begging for recommendations from gargoyle leaders.

Jacob held up a hand to interrupt them, "I still had to get letters from just about everyone else in my life, but I wasn't going to drive three-hundred miles to a gargoyle I had never met for an optional letter, especially when more and more gargoyle clans were turning against our coming here. I didn't like the thought of walking up to a clan home, asking for a letter from an irritable gargoyle and getting split in half."

"Yet you came to a school where there might be _hundreds_ of gargoyles who want to do just that to you. Why would you take that risk?" Sylvie asked.

Jacob shrugged and said, "You did, too. File us under brave and stupid."

* * *

He bid farewell to Pierre and headed towards his room as sunset approached. Jacob hurried up the stairs, for while the others might have been accustomed to seeing and hearing gargoyles wake up, he was eager to see it for the first time. 

Jacob found his room key, opened the door and walked to the wall directly opposite of his roommate's perch. Looking east, he could not see the sun itself set, but he watched as the sky grew ever darker.

He knew the moment of sunset came when the skin on the gargoyle before him began to crack. The process was slow at first, but it was not long before Jacob could hear a distinct growl and, as the creature stirred, the flakes of stone fell away. The gargoyle burst through the shell with a roar, enhanced by the cries of hundreds of other gargoyles in the city and at the school as they awoke. When his roar subsided, the gargoyle yawned and stretched before brushing off lingering flakes of skin and turning around.

The pictures seemed lacking as preparation for the gargoyle's likeness. He was not as tall as he knew gargoyle males could be, just a few inches over Jacob, but he was far more muscular. Well scarred on his arms and legs, he was simply clothed, wearing a hide vest, untied to expose his chest, and a set of loincloths; the forward cloth was square-cut, blood red with a yellow border, the other cloth was longer, set behind the first, similarly cut and silver with a red border.

It was not a moment after the gargoyle turned that their eyes met and locked. Jacob's eyes betrayed trepidation while the gargoyle's assessed him, like any predator determining if he was a threat by the subtleties of his stance, motions and expression.

The gargoyle spoke first. "You are to live with me?" he asked with a scratched, deep voice.

"Yes," he replied, choking back a fear that was rising in him as the gargoyle's stare penetrated him.

Jacob heard a growl and saw the lips of the gargoyle begin to curl back while a faint glow overtook his eyes, and it occurred to Jacob to plan a quick escape and find the person responsible for roommate assignments.

But escape was not necessary as the face-off ended as soon as it started. The gargoyle smiled, approached him with hand extended and said, "I am Malach, from the North Valley Clan of the Shenandoah."

Jacob breathed a sigh of relief, and took his hand, "Jacob Goldberg, from Saint Paul of Nebraska. You gave me a start."

Malach laughed, "I am sorry, but when the school contacted me to ask if I would live with a human, I said wanted a strong human. I had to see if you were what I asked for."

"What would you have done if I ran away?"

Malach shrugged. "I did not think you would. Have you had the opportunity to look around, my friend of the daytime?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Then let me introduce you to some friends before we have to be registered."

They stepped out into the hall and Malach knocked on the door of their neighbors. "_C'est Malach, des amis_!"

A moment later a beaked, long-horned female answered the door. She was shorter than Jacob by a good measure and the color of thistle with deep red hair; and on a second pass of the female, Jacob saw that the pair of long horns which grew back from her brow flanked a pair of smaller horns. Her strength was apparent, though no comparison to Malach.

From behind her another female came to the door. She barely stood above Jacob's waist, and, unlike all the gargoyles he had seen to this point, her wings were webbed between her arms and legs. Her skin was aquamarine, her hair cobalt and her tail ended with four spikes.

Malach indicated the taller female, "Our friend here comes from Venezuela, and she from Nepal." He placed an arm around Jacob's shoulder, "And from Nebraska is our human resident, Jacob."

"Hello," the two females said to Jacob.

"Nice to meet you," he replied. "But Malach skipped on your names, so…"

The Venezuelan smiled and interrupted, "Our clans have kept to the old tradition of not restricting us with names."

"Ah. So, what am I supposed to call you when you're not around for reference?"

She put her hand over her heart, "We've known each other for not a minute and already you plot behind my back? I'm hurt, human!"

"I don't mean _badly_! I mean just in general conversation." The female's smile broadened as he became defensive and, not wanting to stick his foot in his mouth any further, he abandoned the point. "Forget it. I'm sorry."

"Malach, you have much work ahead to bring him under our wings," she said.

"I enjoy challenges," he replied.

She laughed, "And it will be a great one! In the meantime, Jacob, you may call me your 'beaked friend across the hall' if you must."

"I am the only one here from my particular humans' nation," the other female said, also visibly amused by the exchange from moments ago. "That should be enough for a name."

"I have many more friends to introduce him to before registration," Malach said, "so we will see you later tonight."

"Certainly," the Venezuelan replied. "It was good meeting you, Jacob."

"Same here. _Je vous verrai plus tard_," he said as Malach led him off.

Once Malach and Jacob were several flights down the stairwell, Malach said, "You seemed surprised by our friends."

"Well, for one I hadn't expected to be living on a floor with females, and the no names thing got me. I thought that was just an old custom."

Malach chuckled, "You need to abandon many of your human conventions, friend. You are among gargoyles now. We are all raised together, male and female. It is not like how you humans raise your children. And receiving names is not as old a custom for us as you might think. Humans provide names for my nation because it is not likely that we would do it ourselves."

"Well, that's why I'm here – to learn these things."

"Stay under my wing, friend," Malach said confidently. "I will make you the greatest tailless, wingless and clawless gargoyle that ever lived."

* * *

The gargoyle leaned on the railing and looked down into the nave. When he spotted the human and gargoyle walking among the crowd, he summoned his friend. "Would you look at that?" 

His friend from the Laurentian Mountains, much shorter and leaner than he was, came to his side and saw what had his attention. He snorted, "Already has a guardian."

"All the humans do. The school paired each of them up with a willing gargoyle. They say it's to make the humans get used to life with gargoyles, but really it was for their protection."

"So how are we to proceed, Sloane?"

Grey-skinned with white hair and tall even by gargoyle standards, Sloane was easily among the most imposing of the students at the school. He was never shy about using, or threatening to use, his strength to make a point.

His friend, unnamed as per the gargoyles' traditions, did not have Sloane's physical presence, but he was not weak by any standard. Crimson and bald, eight spikes along his brow, he had met Sloane long before either of them applied to Avignon at a rally to free gargoyles from human meddling.

Though both gargoyles could have had a seat at the school on their own merits, their shared society had gone to great lengths to make sure that they were accepted to Avignon once it became known that humans would attend.

"Carefully, friend," Sloane replied. "It must be the case that the humans attack us; we would be fools to look like the aggressors."

"And how are we going to accomplish _that_? They're not here to attack gargoyles."

"That is i exactly /i why they are here. Maybe not physically – not yet – but the conspirators saw that we were getting too strong for their liking, and this school was their primary target for our undoing."

"If they hear of gargoyles attacking humans, their actions will be justified," his friend warned. "Perhaps we should find allies first, before we make plans."

"No. With so few of us at this place, the walls will have many unfriendly ears, and word of a plot against the humans will embolden the conspirators. If we have allies, they will find us."

The gargoyles watched the human interact with the gargoyles below, eventually causing Sloane to growl. "Look at him, at _them_. You would think all the crimes of the past never happened."

"You would think that," his friend agreed.

"We must make the humans fight each other. They are not like gargoyles, they don't understand what it means share bonds beyond blood." He looked at his friend, "Did you know they fight over the tone of their skin? Imagine if red gargoyles decided to fight blue gargoyles, how stupid that would be."

"At least they can tell the difference between them," his friend replied. "All humans almost look the same to me."

"They act the same, too, which is why it should not be a hard thing to create division among them." Sloane looked back to the scene below. "Do you know which human that is?"

"The American, the non-indigenous one. I don't know his name, though."

"And the gargoyle?"

"His markings are for an Appalachian warrior, and only the Shenandoah are so brazen with their displays of rank."

Sloane nodded. "We have our work cut out for us, it seems. But tonight is busy, and we have six years to drive out the humans. We will plot later."

Though his friend walked away, Sloane stayed to observe the human for a moment longer. While Jacob was engaged in conversation, Malach's instincts warned him he was being watched by unfriendly eyes, so he turned to spot his adversary. Sloane sneered and left in the same direction as his friend, and Malach stood closer to his human charge.

* * *

The students had collected in the gymnasium, a room at the heart of the palace. Unlike other rooms of the old complex, the gym was well-lit and updated to modern standards. The limestone walls were hidden behind modern materials and equipment and the floor was treated hardwood. 

A mix of gargoyle and human administrators directed the students through the painstaking process of signing forms, collecting books for the first classes and receiving their uniforms.

At the end of the registration process, the more than three hundred students waited in lines for their turn to step onto scales and find out to what fighting class they would be assigned. Sophie, standing in the middle of one of the lines, looked over the gym uniform the school had made for her. The uniform was simple: a white robe and leggings, both lightweight, though the fabric was tough enough to withstand the brutality of gargoyle combat. At least for a while.

On the right sleeve of the robe were two badges, one to represent the flag of her nation – a banner Sable, an Or gargoyle displayed addextré of the emblem of the Netherlands rampant guardant, another Or gargoyle displayed senestré to the emblem rampant guardant – above the familiar flag of her humans' nation – a banner Gules, five bars Argent, the canton Azure charged with forty-eight mullets Argent. The left sleeve was barren, awaiting the addition of the badge of her assigned class.

With almost half the student body nameless, heraldry was all too important, despite each gargoyle being unique in his or her own form.

The female in front of her, about her height and build, tan skinned and black haired, aquatic-like ears, turned around and asked, "Is it true that we stay in the same combat class all six years?"

Sophie looked up from her inspection and nodded.

"But what if one gains, say, seven stones over the course of the year? By the time of the Competition, they'd have too great an advantage!"

"I think if anyone should gain seven stones in a year, they'd be too tired from gaining weight to do much fighting."

The female smiled, "Too true." She extended her hand, "Camila."

She shook her hand, "Sophie. Where are you from?"

"Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. And you?"

"New Amsterdam."

Camila whistled. "An impressive place to be from! I feel like I am in the presence of royalty."

Sophie raised her brow, "Royalty?"

"The clans of your nation practically control our world, friend! The president of the United Clans, New Amsterdam; the owners of our television channels, New Amsterdam; Katrien, loved by gargoyle and human alike, New Amsterdam."

She offered a short, embarrassed laugh. "I guess I look past that," she said. "The president is my leader and Katrien is my hatching sister."

Camila smiled. "I can see how you might be blinded to my perception. Just make sure that when you join their ranks you remember your friends here."

Sophie laughed, "Of course."

"So, what class do you think you will be in?"

"Unless my scale at home lied, or the school changed its system, I should be a Class Two."

Camila looked her over, "I think you are right. Perhaps we will be paired together in training."

"You never know."

Interrupting their and the many side conversations among the students, administrators bellowed in French and English, "Step onto the scale, give your name and or nation, receive your assignment and go to that class' area! Class areas are designated on the walls! Once all classes have assembled, proceed as a class to the auditorium! The faster this happens, the faster we all get to eat."

-----

Jacob stood in front of Malach in their line. Running their scale was a short, yellow female gargoyle with red hair, who wasted little time processing the students as they approached the scale.

"_Sept pierres, classe une_," she said moments after a short female gargoyle, who identified herself as being from Morocco, stepped on the scale.

Once she left for her section, a tall, impossibly muscled male stepped onto the scale. "Sloane, Canada."

"_Vingt et une moitié pierres, classe cinq_."

"Stones still get me," Malach said.

Jacob turned around. "Pardon?"

"When my clan joined the gargoyle nations, we had to change our measurements to the metric system in order to trade. We had been on the American system for all my life before then, it's been hard to make the change."

"It can't be that bad."

"Oh? If it's so easy, why hasn't your country made the transition?" he said, brow raised and with a grin.

Jacob chuckled, "I take it back."

A few gargoyles later Jacob stepped towards the scale before the female stopped him. "You and the other humans are in your own class. You will not need to be weighed."

"What? How come?" he asked, surprised and upset.

She stared at him blank-faced for a moment before she raised her brow. "Are you joking? You are here to live with us, not be _killed_ by us. Step aside, please."

Not wanting to hold up the line, Jacob stepped aside but continued his inquiry. "I thought part of the experience of living with gargoyles was to train with them, too."

The female ignored him for a moment as Malach stepped on the scale, "Malach, Shenandoah Nation," he said.

"Sixteen stones, class four," the female replied. She turned her attention back to Jacob, "And you _will_ train alongside gargoyles, but you will not fight us directly."

Before Jacob could press further, a male gargoyle from further back in his line said, "If you insist on it, human, I'll fight you!" The gargoyles in the immediate area laughed, and others "volunteered" their talents to train with Jacob.

The female beside him pursed her lips and let out a sharp whistle that quieted the students immediately. She looked at Jacob, "If it concerns you so much, take it up with the high chancellor later. In the meantime, join your fellow humans and let me get back to this."

Jacob might have been inclined to keep up the fight had Malach not put an arm around his shoulder and led him away. Once out of earshot of the other gargoyles Malach said, "I can understand that you want to prove yourself, but there are some fights that are just foolish. A gargoyle of your weight would murder you without becoming short of breath."

"But it's not fair that we're getting separated."

"Nature is not always fair, friend, and Nature has made it so that you humans are not as skilled or as fierce warriors as us gargoyles. Perhaps in time the leaders will change their minds and let you in on our contests, but for now let it be."

Jacob frowned and saw where his fellow humans were collecting, each looking similarly displeased. He said as he walked away, "I'm fighting a gargoyle before I leave here, I promise you."

Malach sighed and replied quietly, "I fear just that."

* * *

The auditorium was impressive. Like the rest of the building, it was exposed limestone, and it was set up like an ancient amphitheater with the rows of seats arranged in semicircles, and the stage was just the stone floor. Though the students had entered from doors near the upper row of seats, there were two other doors to the room on the sides of the stage. 

Along the walls were long tapestries of prior chancellors of the school and leaders of the Avignon clan, and on the back wall to the stage were two large portraits, one of Pope Urban the Fifth and the other of the gargoyle Constantine the Great, the two figures responsible for the university's creation. The pope's likeness was of a gentle person, even as old age had set in at the time he had sat down for the portrait. Constantine, however, was stern, his dark blue face betraying little emotion.

With all the gargoyles assembled in this one place, Jacob got a much greater sense of their diversity as a species. All colors were represented in their skin, they had a wide variety of brow, horn and wing configurations, all to say nothing of their stature, and even a number of more animal-formed gargoyles were present – some appeared more avian, serpentine and even aquatic than the other gargoyles.

But as curious as Jacob was by the gargoyles, it did not take much deduction to tell that the gargoyles were just as interested in him and the other human students; virtually all their eyes and whispers were directed towards them, and it did not help that they had all been seated together. Worse, they were in the front row, and Jacob could feel the stares of the gargoyles behind him, though he would not dare turn around.

Loren, seated next to Jacob, said quietly, "If ever you feel uncomfortable again, just remember this moment."

"You'd think they wouldn't make it so obvious," Jacob replied. "It's like they're trying to make an example out of us."

Some minutes later an imposing male gargoyle entered the room from a side door to the stage and said boldly, "_Levez-vous pour le chancelier Constantine_!"

The students stood and from the same door walked in a grey gargoyle with similarly colored hair, only vestiges of its original brown remaining, assisted by a cane. He inhaled the last of a cigar and discarded the stub into a trashcan before walking onto the stage. The male guard took up post by the doorway as another gargoyle, this one female, short with skin the color of fired brick and lavender hair, entered and sat in a chair by the back wall.

The chancellor stood at the center of the stage and, after a moment, motioned for the students to sit. As he spoke, the female in the back translated into English, "You are, without question, the greatest gargoyles of your generation. All of you. There are more than one hundred sixty thousand gargoyles of your generation, one hundred thousand applied to this school, and of them there are the three hundred six of you here tonight. This number is no accident."

The old gargoyle began to pace, the click of his cane against the stone floor accenting his footfalls, "For the first time in the more than five hundred years of this university, we have at least one gargoyle for every human nation where gargoyles exist, and one gargoyle for every gargoyle nation that exists.

"You are all our race's future leaders as well. Every student who has come here has gone home to be leaders of their clans, and almost every member of the United Clans was a student here. The gargoyle world looks up to you now, and they will look up to you forever."

Constantine stopped pacing at the center of the stage, tapped his cane against the side of his foot a few times and smiled, "But, I am sure you knew these things, and I am sure that is what least interests you tonight. Because this session is host to another first for the university." He held his hand out to Jacob and his friends, "We have humans."

The students began to whisper among themselves, a few growled and others gave the humans uninviting glares. Above the chatter Constantine said, "Mister Goldberg, if you would come forward."

Jacob's stomach and heart changed places and the gargoyles quieted, all now focused on him. He hesitated to stand, so Constantine beckoned him to come with his hand. Jacob looked over to the other human students and their confused expressions gave him little comfort. So he stood, walked to the center of the stage and faced the other students.

"Young Jacob here represents much of humanity," Constantine said, pointing at him with his cane. "He knows that we live, but he himself has not had the privilege to live alongside us. And, like most humans, he is a rather pitiful creature…" the gargoyle students laughed and cheered while the humans sank into further discomfort. Jacob got the feeling that he was on trial, indeed being made an example of humanity's faults.

Constantine held up a hand to silence the students and finished, "Compared to us gargoyles. But though you laugh and revel in humankind's apparent inferiority to our kind, you forget that they, not us, have ownership of this world. Why?"

The students exchanged bewildered looks and muttered speculations, but after some time a male seated among the class five gargoyles, the group of the toughest males at the school, called out, "Because they breed like sewer rats!"

More laughter from the students, and even Constantine broke a smile. He let the laughter carry on for longer than before and die out on its own. He turned to the male student, "True, humans have more freedom to breed than we do, as we are tied to the rhythms of the planet; however, in the time of my rookery parents and elders, human growth was almost the same if not less than that of our kind, yet even then they were the dominant species of the world. Other reasons?"

A female called out from the students, "Because they murdered us in our sleep by the thousands!"

Less revelry from the students than before, a smattering of growls and angry whispers, and while Jacob maintained a straight face he thought for the first time that perhaps coming to Avignon was a mistake.

Constantine quieted the group again. "Yes, our numbers were reduced greatly by humankind, but it was only possible because the humans were exercising their superiority. Come now, how did the lowly human rise above the gargoyle to commit those atrocities?"

Silence. The old gargoyle sighed and began to circle Jacob, speaking to the students but keeping his eyes fixed on him. "They have no claws, no fangs, weak muscles, thin skin and can succumb to organisms that escape even _our_ keen eyes. But for all our strengths over them, we could not stop humanity's ascension. How did this vulnerable creature come to dominate our world?"

"They make things," a female said.

"Do not gargoyles make 'things?'"

"Yes, but humans do it better than we can; and they make machines to do it better than they can. They also, um, adapt better than we can."

"Ah!" Constantine said emphatically, stepping towards the students. "Humans observe, learn, adapt and survive much faster than gargoyles. Their numbers shrink, so they find ways to boost their fertility, while we cannot. The elements penetrate their skin, so they make layers for themselves, build great structures, and even remake the very climate they live in, whereas the gargoyle will be content to live with what nature provides – for better or for worse.

"When this world becomes too little for humanity, they will learn how to escape it; they have already built camps on the moon – _the moon_, young ones! – to fuel their industry, and have left their devices on Mars. Would we have glided to the moon if left to our own devices? Would we ever dream to do such a thing?"

Constantine returned to Jacob and placed a hand on his head, "The human _mind_, students, is the greatest thing in all of nature, greater than all the strengths of gargoyles combined, and it is what they used to become our superiors."

He released Jacob and stepped towards the back wall. He looked at the portraits, "My ancestor, the founder of modern gargoyle ways, knew this. He knew that we had to adapt like the humans in order to survive. And so my forebear asked Pope Urban to help him build a place where all gargoyles could learn from humans, to rebuild themselves and reclaim their lost glory."

The chancellor turned around, "And that is the purpose of this university. Thanks to this institution's legacy, you can now learn modern things from educated gargoyles, learn about our kind's contributions to this world and all that we have left to give. With each generation that passes through here we recover ourselves from the days of darkness."

He stepped towards the students. "I know many of you believe that because the mission of this university is to teach gargoyles gargoyle things the humans have no place here. But I guarantee you that the humans will learn faster than you, adapt to our ways better than you can imagine and will prove to you that they are worth your respect; and, in turn, it is your mission to prove to them, and to humanity, that gargoyles are more than an animals they can claim dominion over and that we are realizing our place in this world.

"Then, with mutual respect and a common understanding of the ways of the world, perhaps generations in years to come will no longer know a division between our races and come know humans and gargoyles as neighbors, not competitors for dominance."

The students were silent, and Constantine turned to Jacob, "You may return to your seat." Jacob did not hesitate to leave the stage.

"Now," Constantine said once Jacob sat down, resuming his pacing, "by coming to this school, you have joined my clan. You are now my children as much as are my children, brothers and sisters to each other as much as they are, and join a family that is worldwide.

"In this clan, we do not punish, but for the gravest offenses; we reward greatness. You will not be asked to leave if your ability to learn is not immediately that of your peers; you will not be shunned if in combat you do not prove to be as great a warrior as you think you are. We will build you into a greater gargoyle, no matter what the cost or effort, and you will be rewarded for your progress.

"Each time you return to your native clans and families, you will be better. You will be elevated in their sight and you will accomplish great things. That is what we will do for you. In return, all we ask is your loyalty, and your dedication to our mission and your improvement. As we teach you the things of science and the arts, teach us the ways of your clan so that we might all understand better what it means to be a gargoyle and what kind of world we should create for ourselves."

Constantine stopped at the center of the stage and smiled. "The problem with exhortations is that they go on for too long. It has been a long night for you, I am sure, and so I will stop talking. Go and feast, become acquainted with your new brothers and sisters – even your human ones – for the rest of this night. Our bold mission will begin tomorrow."

_To be concluded_


	4. Arrival, Part 3

All the characters appearing in _Gargoyles_ and _Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles_ are copyright Buena Vista Television/The Walt Disney Company. No infringement of these copyrights is intended, and is not authorized by the copyright holder. All original characters are the property of "Alex Checnkov."

The Avignon University presented here is not meant in any way to represent the Universite D'Avignon and any similarities are coincidental.

* * *

**_New Horizons: Arrival, Part III_**  
Alex Checnkov

While the rest of the student body left the auditorium for the dining hall, Jacob tucked the books and uniforms he had received at registration under his seat and he left in the same direction as the chancellor and the younger gargoyle.

He caught up with the pair just before they stepped out onto a perch at the end of a back corridor to glide home and asked, "Chancellor, can I talk with you for a moment?"

The old gargoyle stopped, turned and replied, "Of course. Did I embarrass you in there?"

"Well - no, this isn't about that. I and the other human students weren't assigned to a weight class tonight, and I want to know why."

Constantine raised his brow, "Do you really need to ask?"

"Yes. I thought the purpose of our being here is to foster co-existence. How are we supposed to do that if we're separated?"

The chancellor nodded in thought and asked after a moment of pause, "How much do you weigh, Jacob?"

"Around two-hundred pounds, so fourteen stones maybe. Class three."

The chancellor looked to his attendant, "And you?"

"Eleven stones," she replied.

"You would be in class two, then?"

"Yes."

The leader pointed a talon at Jacob, and before he could react the female took hold of, lifted and threw the human down the corridor with a hiss like a wildcat. Jacob landed hard on the stone floor and had the wind knocked out of him, and before he could stand up and recover the female pounced and pinned him to the floor.

Her eyes burned red and she growled as she held him to the floor. Casually, the chancellor walked over and placed a hand on the young gargoyle's shoulder, and at that signal her aggression ended and she stood up.

Jacob, however, was still too bewildered and without breath to do much more than lie on the floor and catch his breath. Constantine knelt down and asked, "If I allowed that to happen to you and your human friends, how long do you think you would live? Certainly not the full six years of your enrollment."

Constantine helped Jacob to his feet once he had his breath back and then walked with the female towards the perch.

"The purpose of your being here is to learn, Jacob," he said without looking back. "You attend schools to learn."

Once the pair glided off into the night, Jacob asked after them, "And what in Hell am I supposed to be learning _here_?"

* * *

A feast indeed! 

Malach, like so many of his peers who had known seasons of poor hunts and little food, was overwhelmed by the sight before him. Both serving lines of the cafeteria were filled with all possible meats, fruits and vegetables with baskets of bread dispersed along them; and fountain machines at the end of the serving lines, just before the doors that led into the dining hall itself, provided more than enough drink variety.

His whole clan working for food for a week would not be able to come up with such a bounty.

As his line moved forward, Malach withdrew from an inner vest pocket an etiquette booklet that the school had sent him - and a quick look around the room reassured him that he was not alone in doing so. Malach turned through the various pages until he found the section on dining.

"For many clans," the chapter began, "meals play an especially important role in traditions. This is just as true in Avignon. However, since students bring to the school with them such a wide variety of customs, this section will outline some standards that will ensure there are no conflicts between students.

"First, while it is common for many clans to eat without utensils or dishware - forks, plates, etc. - students are asked to make use of the provided tools to maintain an organized and clean eating environment."

Malach snorted, prompting the shorter male standing behind him to ask, "Do you have different traditions?"

He looked away from the booklet to reply, "We get our food in common, set out blankets in the barracks and eat what we are allotted."

The yellow, beaked student, dressed in casual attire better suited to a human than a gargoyle, raised his featureless brow under long brown hair, "That's all?"

"The only thing you _need_ at a meal is food. The blankets are only to keep the dirt out of our diet."

"Makes sense."

The line progressed enough to allow Malach to take a tray and plate from their stacks, followed by utensils provided in bins.

"What are your customs?"

He responded after getting his own set of dining wares, "It's to each his own. Except for the youngest generations, we prepare our own meals, or go into the city. We typically don't eat as a clan unless it's a holiday."

Malach raised his brow, "Where are you from?"

"Colorado, just outside of Denver." He extended his hand, "James, by the way."

"I am Malach, from the Shenandoah," he replied before shaking his hand.

"Is that short for Malachi?"

"No, Malachite, after the stone."

James snorted and said, "A gargoyle named after a stone. I think that makes the most sense out of all the practices I've heard so far."

"We are not all named after stones in my nation. They are based off our calendar and what symbol we hatch under. There will not be another stone generation for two-hundred years." The line moved forward once again to place Malach in reach of the first bread basket, from which he raided three dinner rolls.

"At least you get to be unique."

Malach shook his head and said, "My build, shade and character are what make me unique, friend, while my name limits me. With only so many stones in the ground to match our tones, there are four others I have met with my name."

"So, if someone just refers to 'Malach,' how do you know who they're talking about?"

He was about to answer when someone placed a hand on his shoulder and said, "We call this one 'the small one,' but only if we want to pick a fight."

As though he would, in fact, start a fight, Malach turned with a sharp look to see who had revealed his despised character name, but his stance changed when he saw the offender.

"_Elatay_!" he said in greeting his friend with an embrace. "I have been looking for you since I arrived."

"Peace, friend," the bald turquoise male with two small horns along his brow, only a few inches taller than James but discernibly more toned, said as he returned Malach's embrace. "The festival lasted long this year, so I only arrived a few hours ago."

Once he let go a moment later, Malach ran the gold trim on the sleeve of his friend's white tunic between his talons. "I see they made you a priest. Congratulations."

"Thank you," he said with a smile. "It was more difficult than I thought it would be."

"And Rita? How did she perform?"

"She insisted that I not tell. You will find out when you see her again."

Malach shook his head and smiled, "I should have expected it."

The line moved again and Malach returned to it to keep pace, arriving at the first trays of meats. "Have you gotten your food yet?" he asked as he took generous helpings of pork.

"Yes, and I am seated with a few others near the back of the hall. Come sit with us when you are finished here."

"Of course." Malach indicated James, "This is a new companion of mine."

James turned and extended his hand, "James, happy to meet you."

"Lazwar, I am happy to meet you as well," he said placing both his hands over James' one in place of a handshake. "I will let you get back to getting your meals and look forward to sharing with you," he said after releasing James' hand and turning to leave.

"You too, friend," Malach said after him as he moved down the line.

After a moment's pause, James said, "Not to be rude, but 'Lazwar?'"

Malach replied through a crooked grin, "Lazurite."

* * *

Sophie picked at her salad while she waited for her companions to return. Going through the lines, she was both impressed by the sheer quantity of food the school was able to provide and unnerved by just how much of it the students consumed. 

She looked around the room and saw plates piled high with more meat and bread than anything else, maybe some fruits and vegetables on the sides, and most of the students had opted for water than the other drinks available. Only a few glasses of milk or juice and even fewer of soda were visible.

Her meals had always been light, though not by any scarcity. Since the sun provided the vast majority of her energy, she stuck to the old rule to not eat more than three fists-worth of food per meal; although she was sure that rule would become an exception once the combat training began.

While Sophie ate, she flipped through the etiquette booklet Camila left behind as she went for a refill of her drinks.

"Hierarchy plays a vital role in many clan societies," she read, "and it is the same at Avignon. Your accomplishments will bring you recognition among your peers in many ways, but the school will encourage this by truly placing you at the head of your class should you achieve it. After your first rating at the end of two years, you will be seated in your classes by academic rank, assigned competition partners by your fighting ability, and seated in the dining hall by your overall standing."

Sophie looked around the dining hall at the groups which had formed. Most students had opted to seat either with others they had known before arriving at the school or those they had just met. Others gathered by such qualifiers as the place of their homes or common language.

And, indeed, the room hummed with conversations in a multitude of languages, some she could recognize and others new to her.

Not long after she left, Camila returned to the table with a glass of milk and another plate of meet.

"What did you get this time?" Sophie asked.

"Venison. I have never had it before, but it makes me very much want to move north so I can hunt it myself," she replied as she cut into the meat.

"Do you hunt much at home?"

Camila shook her head. "As I am sure you know, the city provides enough food. But sometimes my brothers and sisters and I travel to the jungle for a hunt, but not in a while. Do you hunt?"

"No. I didn't really do much fighting or things like it until a few years ago, once I got serious about coming here."

Camila finished a piece of venison and downed some milk before asking, "Did you do any kind of training as a young gargoyle?"

"We had nightly exercises starting around age ten and up to when we were thirty, but after that we were kind of left on our own. And, really, the only ones who kept going were the ones who wanted to become police officers."

With that last sentence, Sophie's mind immediately occupied itself with thoughts of Nicholas, having been too occupied with the multitude of tasks in the last few hours to think about him.

She wondered if her courting had worked, if the two were finally on the path to becoming mates after so many years of efforts; and she worried about the risks he would face after he graduated from the academy in a few nights.

It was then that Lazwar returned to the table. "I found my friend, and he and another will join us soon."

"Great," Sophie said. "So, what was this festival you were talking about that kept you late?"

"It is to celebrate that we will enjoy life more than sleep for the next six months. Warriors compete to increase their rank, and clerics, like I was, perform rituals in the hopes of becoming a priest," Lazwar smiled, "which I did. It is a time to reconnect with friends not seen for a long time, and, for some, it is a time to find a mate."

"And this is something your local clans do?"

"All nations of the Appalachians participate, and we often host visitors from clans around the world. You should come next year."

"I just might. There aren't a lot of celebrations at home," Sophie said.

"Is there a lot of food there?" Camila asked.

Lazwar laughed, "It is the one time of the year we can be sure we will not go hungry."

"Then I will come, too."

Malach and James arrived at the table, both following in the likeness of most others and boasting ample portions of meat. Malach sat next to Lazwar, James by Sophie, and exchanged introductions.

Sophie asked, "So, how do you and Malach know each other?"

"When his clan was independent like mine," Lazwar said, "we shared hunting grounds. After he joined the Shenandoah clans, we saw less of each other. Then his mate took the same path as I did, and we were able to stay friends that way."

"So, what is the religion you are a part of?"

Lazwar curled his lip as he pondered his answer. He answered, "It is not like what the humans have. Our task is to keep the others mindful of the gifts of nature, and to make sure that nature is honored."

"They are also what humans call judges," Malach said. "When some violate our clan laws, the priests hand down punishments."

James interrupted the line of conversation and said, "Speaking of humans, where do you all stand on them being here?"

Malach and Lazwar exchanged glances and shrugged. Malach said after swallowing some food, "I am not bothered. I am living with one of them, and I think it will be a good thing."

"I am not bothered either," Lazwar said. "We share this planet, we should share our knowledge and customs, too."

The other gargoyles at the table, however, visibly disagreed, either with curled lips or shaking heads. Sophie spoke on their behalf, "I have nothing against humans, really, but they won't let us have our own culture. Whenever we get something that's _ours_, humans want a piece of it."

James and Camila nodded in agreement, and Malach asked, "Where are you from again?"

"New Amsterdam."

He looked at Camila and she answered, "Rio de Janeiro."

"Denver," James said without being prompted.

"I find that amusing," Malach said. "You three have lived near more humans than I will ever know, you are even dressed like them, and yet complain that they are eroding our customs. Could it not be, perhaps, that the problem is that you are taking too much of their customs?"

Sophie was not prepared for the argument. She had grown up being told about human intrusions, and how she would never experience what it would be like to be a true gargoyle because of them. And now, less than two minutes into knowing her, Malach suggested that _she_ was at fault.

It took effort to keep her anger in check, but she did manage to respond calmly. "Well, don't you think maybe we're better to judge humans than you? I mean, like you said, we've grown up around them, and we know what they're like. What do you know about humans?"

Malach shook his head. "I admit not very much. I went to their capital city once as a youth for a few nights, and my friends and I sometimes go into the nearby city for a meal. But there are many humans near my home who are very receptive to us, and I like to think that their kindness is what humans are really like. Maybe my humans are different from yours."

He continued, "But you still did not answer my question. Even if you are better to judge humans, could you be the ones taking too much from them rather them from you?"

"We can't even be free in the sky above our home because of them!" Sophie protested. "And the Bureau is always poking and prodding to make sure we're following all their rules; if the rest of the human government did the same thing to its own citizens, there would be no crime and no liberty."

Lazwar spoke up, "You could leave the city. There are no gargoyles along much of the Appalachians north of us, and there you and your clan could live away from humans."

She was floored by the suggestion. "Why do we have to move? We were here first. Would you leave your home if humans encroached?"

"Humans are not the problem for us," he said. "Other gargoyles are. It will not be long before many clans have to split up and migrate in order to keep enough resources for everybody."

"Yeah, well, even humans are leaving their cities faster than we can keep up. They'll be a problem for you eventually, then there won't be anywhere for us to live in peace."

Malach drank down his water and said, "I am glad that we could meet. I think you and I should be friends, and we will learn much from each other."

* * *

Around the corner before the dining hall was a series of cubbyholes assigned to the students for them to put their belongings so as not to take up space while they ate. Jacob found his name and stashed his books and uniforms away before turning the corner. 

Still aching from the brief and one-sided sparring session, Jacob rubbed his neck as he approached his human peers, who had gathered outside the doors of the dining hall.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Are they not letting you in?"

Loren responded, "We thought it would be best to go in as a group, and after the gargoyles got their food. What happened to you?"

"I got an early lesson. But why are you all waiting around?"

"Never get between a gargoyle and his food or mate," Osyka said. "Since we haven't been brought into the folds of their society yet, it's best not to look like we're intruding."

He replied sharply, "'Brought into the folds' nothing. We got accepted here, and that's good enough; and right now, I'm starving."

As Jacob walked to the door, Loren put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Jacob, I know you're on this crusade to show that we're equal to gargoyles, but the fact is that we're not. If you go storming in their social order time and again, they're going to get annoyed pretty quickly, and that's not a good thing."

Jacob looked around the group. "And all of you are buying this?"

"We grew up with gargoyles, friend," Imaran said. "This is the way of things."

Jacob shrugged off Loren's hand from his shoulder and leaned against the wall. "Well, the way of things sucks."

They waited outside the hall for a few more minutes without much conversation, occasionally peering in to see when the lines were light enough that they felt comfortable entering. When the only ones in line were gargoyles returning for second helpings, they filed in and got their meals under less-than friendly glances from the gargoyles present.

Once all they all had their food, they left the serving area and entered the dining hall. The moment they stepped into the hall, the many conversations that had been taking place moments before went silent.

The group of humans stood quietly as they met the glares of the other students. Jacob managed to see Malach towards the back of the hall, but his posture and facial expression were not inviting, nor were those of the others he was sitting with, and getting back to him was not an inviting prospect.

Loren nudged him and indicated an empty table not more than a few feet away that could accommodate the group. As they made their way to the table, Jacob said to the gargoyles to break the silence, "How're y'all tonight? Good?"

Most of the students got the cue to end their silent stand-off and resumed their conversations in muted tones.

"That wasn't awkward," Loren said once seated.

"Do we have to look forward to this _every_ night?" Sylvie asked.

None of them had an answer, and they lingered on her question in silence for the remainder of their meal.

* * *

The school had not scheduled anything after the dinner for the night, and so the students assembled at various places around the campus to socialize. While the rest of the humans went back to their rooms, Malach caught Jacob after the meal and went to campus' gardens, where many of the students had gathered. 

Jacob asked on the way, "So what was with the cold shoulder back there?"

"Some of my friends had made it known that they were not too receptive to you, and I did not want to agitate them," he responded. "I hope you will forgive me."

Jacob smiled, "I was never cross at you, just curious. Is that going to be normal for a while?"

"I am afraid so, friend. But once they and the others see that you and your friends are no threat to them, you will be accepted."

"And when will that happen?"

Malach shrugged and said, "It depends on your efforts."

Jacob shook his head, "My friends have it in mind that you all will resist us more if we try and force our way into your social order."

"They are likely right," he responded. "However, such emotions pass with time. Just be persistent, and the others will come to see you as a friend."

"Mixed signals - great. If I wanted those, I'd just get a girlfriend."

The night was cool and quiet, the high walls surrounding the campus effectively blocking the sounds of the city around them. In the gardens, the walkways and scattered benches were lit by lights tucked away in the vegetation, an aid to Jacob but clearly a distraction to the gargoyles, who he noticed often looked skyward.

Jacob and Malach met up with Venezuelan who lived across the hall from them. She, like many of the others, was occupied with the heavens. She said, "I cannot see the stars as clearly here as back home. I hope it is not like this every night."

"You're in a city," Jacob said. "It will be like this most nights."

She pouted. "They should have built the school elsewhere, then. It disturbs me if I cannot see the stars."

"Are you planning to navigate a long glide home, friend?" Malach asked with a grin. "I think you will be disappointed when you cannot cross the ocean."

"No," she said, flicking her tail at him with a grin. "I just like to see the stars above my home, and this place is now my home."

She was visibly affected by her words, and she looked down at her feet. "I only just realized that I have left all my friends and family behind for a place almost none of us had heard of a few years ago." She managed a smile. "I hope it will not be too difficult to bear."

"We have all had to leave behind our loved ones for this place," Malach said. "That will help us bond together."

She nodded then looked at Jacob. "Tell me about your home. What is Nebraska - yes? - what is it like?"

"It's a nice place," Jacob said. "But it gets boring after a while. My family has a farm a bit north of town that goes down to the Loup River, and we grow soybeans mostly. Got a mom and dad, obviously, and a younger brother, David, and I miss 'em pretty bad."

The female smiled, "That has always interested me about humans - parentage. I have no idea who my biological parents are, who my cousins might be, but humans _must_ know."

"There are so many of us I guess it helps us to distinguish. We're so-and-so's son or brother as opposed to another person who we could get confused with."

She pondered for a moment then said, "I guess that is a good reason."

"Oh, man," Jacob said suddenly, placing a hand on his forehead. "This reminds me - I was supposed to call home when I got in. You don't mind if I cut and run, do you?"

"Will you come back?" Malach asked.

"I don't know. The jetlag's hitting me pretty hard right now. I think I might go to bed after I call."

"There are at least five hours left in the night! Surely you cannot sleep the rest of the night _and_ the whole day before classes start tomorrow."

Jacob grinned, "You haven't seen humans sleep much, have you?"

Malach laughed. "Well then, friend, I will try not to wake you when I come take my perch before sunrise." He extended his hand. "Sleep well."

Jacob shook his hand. "No problem. But, if you don't mind, wake me up. I really want to see you turn to stone."

Malach raised his brow and exchanged a look with the female, who also looked similarly at a loss for words. Malach turned back to Jacob and said, "If you insist."

Jacob smiled and said before he walked away, "Thanks."

However, it was not long after he left the group before Jacob began to doubt his decision to leave the gardens. As he walked across the parade grounds, lit only by the moon and stars, Jacob could sense that he was being watched.

He paused and looked around but failed to see anything, or anyone, following him.

But he was unnerved enough that when he resumed his walk he did so at a hastened pace. His suspicions were realized when he got to the base of the stairs that would take him up to his dorm.

Sloane stepped out from behind a small, nearby grove and blocked Jacob's path, as well as startling him. His arms were crossed and wings extended, though not to their full span, and he said, "I am impressed that you have the instinct to know when you are being watched, but not surprised that you cannot make use of it."

"Yeah, well, you're the one nature chose to be the hunter, I just make tools. Is hiding in the trees normal behavior for you?"

Slone snorted. "I find it funny how humans like to use humor to try and mask their obvious nervousness."

"If you've got something on your mind, how about you just go ahead and say it."

"You are a combative one." Sloane caped his wings and began to pace around Jacob. "I have no doubt, yet, that you are a kind human, and perhaps your intentions here are innocent. However, willing or not, you and your friends represent the injustice that is humanity taking what it has no claim to. You do not belong here, and I think you know this."

"Problem is that I'm here all the same. I guess you're just going to have to live with that."

"For now, maybe. But I want to give you a fair warning, human, that if you or your friends make any mistake, or any affront to my kind, I promise that you will not be my concern for long."

"I don't think you know who you're threatening, _friend_," Jacob said with a hard glare.

Slone leaned in close to him, "Would you care to try and show me?" He growled and his eyes began to glow.

Jacob's fight or flight instinct tried desperately to kick in with deference to the latter action, but he fought it down to meet Sloane's stare directly. He said, "You just have yourself a good night, friend, and we'll let things run their course, okay?"

As he walked up the stairs, Sloane called after him, "Always look over your shoulder, human! We will be watching you."

* * *

_They always call at this hour_, she thought to herself as she left her meal preparations and dashed for the phone. She picked it up on the fourth ring, "Hello? Goldberg residence." 

"Hi, Mama."

"Jacob!" she said with relief. "I was getting worried. Did you get in okay?"

"Yes ma'am. Do you know who upgraded me to first class for the flight out of New Amsterdam?"

She walked back towards the kitchen, "Oh, that was one of your father's friends. You're so tall, he didn't think it would be comfortable for you to be in coach for all that time."

"Yeah, it would have been a rough trip. Am I interrupting dinner? I'll call back later if I am."

"Oh, I haven't set the table yet. The food is still in the oven and your father is still with David at the rehabilitation center in Grand Island, but they'll be back in a little while."

"Well, give them my best. I don't know how much longer the calling card will last."

She resumed stirring the black beans and said, "Of course I will. So, tell me how it is over there. Have you gotten to see any of the city, yet?"

"Yeah, some of the other students and I went in for lunch, and it's a nice place. And the school folks weren't kidding when they said their place was a palace; it's huge."

Less inquisitive and more concerned, she asked, "And what about the gargoyles? What are they like."

There was a pause before her son continued. "It's hard to tell right now. My roommate's nice, and so are some of his friends…"

She interrupted, "Your _roommate_ is a gargoyle?"

"Yes ma'am, all us humans got a gargoyle roommate."

"Well, that certainly will be an experience for you."

"Oh, yes ma'am."

"But why is it 'hard to tell' about the others?"

Another pause. "They're just, I don't know, nervous about me and the other humans. I think they'll warm up after a while, but I don't know."

She knew there was something more he wanted to say on the matter, but she knew that pushing him on it would not yield results. "Don't let them get to you, Jacob. Whether they do or don't come around, you just be who you are. Like your father said, you made it in and you've got nothing to prove."

"I'll keep that in mind, thanks."

The oven timer went off. "Hold on one second. I need to take the roast out."

"Oh, well, I don't want to burn up all my minutes, I just wanted to call and say I made it. I'll call at the end of the week when I have more to talk about."

Although she could talk for hours more, Jacob was never one for phone conversations. She was disappointed, but said, "I bet you're tired from all that travel, too. I'll let you go, then. Just remember that we're proud of you and you've already accomplished so much."

"Thanks, Mama."

"We love you, Jacob, and I'll make sure your father and brother are around for when you call next."

"I love you too, and I'll send you net-mails before I call when I can."

"You just focus on what it is you've got to do."

"I will. Talk to you soon."

"Bye, Jacob."

"Bye, Mama."

* * *

Jacob's sleep was still dreamless, and like earlier he had fallen asleep before he could get himself properly adjusted in bed. He was brought out of his sleep by a series of pokes from Malach's tail. 

His roommate said, "It was difficult to wake you, you looked so at peace; but you insisted."

Jacob rubbed some of the sleep from his eyes. "Yeah, I really want to see this."

Malach smiled, "You truly are fascinated with my kind. I have yet to decide if that is flattering or unnerving."

"I'll back off after a while, I promise."

"I noticed when you left that you had not gathered your belongings." Malach pointed to Jacob's desk. "I brought them up for you."

"Oh, thanks."

Malach walked to the window at the other end of the room and stepped out onto his perch. Jacob, rather than stand against the wall as he had at sunset, gathered himself against his fear of heights and stepped out onto the opposite perch.

His gargoyle friend knelt down on one knee, rested his hands on his forward leg and opened his wings, and Jacob looked around the walls and watched as the other gargoyles almost in synch walked out of their rooms and took their places. He noticed how many different poses the students struck; some were fierce, others relaxed like Malach.

The horizon became brighter with each passing second it seemed, and before the sun climbed over the distant mountains Malach said, "I know I have only known you for one night, but I think you will do well here."

"Thanks," he replied.

Malach smiled and said, "Sleep well, friend."

"You too. See you tonight."

Malach nodded and looked back towards the horizon as the sun finally crested the mountains. The sound of stone cracking filled the air, and Jacob watched with rapt fascination as the color faded from his friend's skin and clothing to become a dull grey and appeared almost lifeless.

Jacob sighed and said as he went back inside, "I was expecting something a bit more dramatic."

He climbed back into bed and turned away from the window. And although he had avoided the question since his arrival at the school, Jacob could not help but ask himself before he drifted off to sleep, "What have I gotten myself into?"

_Next: "First Lessons"_


	5. First Lessons, Part 1

All the characters appearing in Gargoyles and Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles are copyright Buena Vista Television/The Walt Disney Company. No infringement of these copyrights is intended, and is not authorized by the copyright holder. All original characters are the property of "Alex Checnkov."

The Avignon University presented here is not meant in any way to represent the Universite D'Avignon and any similarities are coincidental.

Warnings: Partial Nudity (not explicit, not sexually themed).

Author's notes: In real life, the Cacapon River is in West Virginia; in this universe, there is no separate state of West Virginia. Furthermore, no disrespect is meant to either Tycho Brahe or Johannes Kepler.

Yes, it's been a long time since my last installment. Graduation, job, unemployment, new job, new place, more unemployment, another new job, you get the picture.

* * *

_**First Lessons, Part 1**_  
Alex Checnkov

_Banks of the Cacapon River, Virginia, July 2018:_

Under the waning crescent moon, the young gargoyle couple sat silent near the river's edge. Malach had approached Rita after sunset to ask that she come out here with him, but after that the two gargoyles had not said a word to each other.

Malach was still holding the letter he had received last night and ran its creases between his fingers while they sat there. He had no reason to tell Rita what it said; he could tell she already knew.

Rita, dark blue-skinned with raven black hair, the membranes of her caped wings unbroken by digits, eventually broke the silence. "When do you have to leave?"

"They start on the equinox," he replied. "I would leave around that time I imagine, maybe a few nights before."

"Will you miss the festival?"

"I think so."

Rita sighed and leaned back on her hands. "You promised that you would watch me compete for the priest rank." She looked over at him, "Are you sure you can't stay for that?"

Malach looked back at her and smiled. "I have watched you practice the dances so many times I am able to picture the competition in my head, and I know you will be elevated."

"I was there when you were elevated to the First Order, why can't you be there for me?"

He moved closer to her to reach out and cup her cheek in the palm of his hand. "I am always here for you, you know that. I did not decide when the school would open, and I cannot go back on my promise to attend."

She sat up and placed a hand over his to carry it off her cheek. "I know," she said. "But it's difficult to think that you will be so far away for so long. There are good schools around here you could have attended."

"They all have human bias," he said. "We know almost nothing about what other gargoyles have done around the world other than what the human books say, and it is important for the next generations to know our history as _we_ know it, not as the humans perceive it."

Rita sat in silence for a while and looked back towards the river, and her tail began to snake about the grasses of the riverbank. "What is it you'll want to do with all the knowledge you'll gain?"

Malach raised his brow. "I do not understand the question."

She looked over at him. "Yes you do. What's the point of taking so many lessons, Malach? What are you going to do with everything you learn?"

"You mean to ask if I am doing this for me or for the clan."

"Yes."

He took in a deep breath and sighed. The question had become routine for him, as had his answer. "I am learning both for me and the clan. I can become a better warrior through the training they will provide, and the knowledge they give me I can bring back to advance the clan."

She shook her head, released his hand and stood. Without pausing to wipe the dirt from the back of her tunic, Rita walked to a nearby tree and leaned against it, facing him with her arms crossed. "You know ambition corrupts, don't you?"

Malach stood. "How is this ambition?"

"You're going away to a distant school you hadn't heard of until ten years ago to become a 'better' warrior, even though you might already be the best warrior of our generation; and you think that _you_ should 'advance' the clan. Why? Why do you have to do these things?"

"If my becoming a better warrior is ambition, what is your desire to become a priest?"

"To protect the way things are, Malach, and there's no shame in it."

"Why is it wrong to find new ways to live?"

"Because it's new doesn't mean it's better. We're living the way our ancestors did, and we're doing fine by it."

"Are we? They also got pushed out of their homes or killed off by the settlers when they came. Do you remember what the humans said when we joined the federation?"

She sighed. "No, Malach, I don't."

"They came to our clan and said we were poor, and that they could help us. Even though we were rich by the standards of our neighbors, by the standards of our ancestors, the humans saw otherwise. Look at what their aid has done for us – we have a well to gather water from instead of having to come down here with buckets, we have the machines to connect with clans across the country, we can preserve our food better.

"The humans were right, we _were_ poor. I want to see what else we are missing and bring that back to our clan."

Rita looked back out at the river and bit down on her lower lip before speaking again. "Yes, the humans have done those things for us." She looked back at him. "But their luxuries also spoil us. The youths have grown lazy in front of the television, the supplies of food the humans bring have dulled our hunting abilities, and the humans' constant handouts of money keep our brothers and sisters from seeking beneficial labor. Because we're in a nation, their government – _their_ government – can tell us what we can and can't do. Our leadership council is almost worthless in projecting our authority.

"What happens if the humans decide to stop providing for us? What will we have left? Or what will future generations look like if the humans continue to intervene? We will be weak, and I don't want to see it happen."

"They have not domesticated us like animals, Rita, we are not helpless. I share your concerns, but I see a different solution. If we learn the humans' ways and the ways of other clans, we might be able to fortify ourselves against conquest."

She snorted and offered a crooked grin in response. "You must share my concerns," she said. "You also see the humans trying to conquer us."

* * *

_Avignon, September 24, 2018:_

Jacob sat at his desk and flipped through his math textbook for the semester.

Before he looked through the school's academic program, Jacob had thought the six-year length of the school's program was to compensate for the gargoyles' circadian rhythm. However, once the school released its schedule, Jacob saw that accommodating the gargoyles' strict nocturnal life was just an underlying reason for the longer-than-human schedule.

"I learned all this in high school," Jacob said as he scanned the book's pages.

Centuries of experience had taught the leadership of Avignon that there would be wide gaps in the educational backgrounds of their students, whether due to natural gaps in their pace of learning or the structure of their education systems. The barrage of tests that the student applicants had been subjected to in the years leading up to their admission included basic tests in mathematics, science, and language proficiency, but the school had been less interested in what students knew than their ability to learn at all. As such, the first year would be remedial for some – like Jacob suspected it would be for him – and advanced for others, but in the end the entire class would have a common foundation upon which the students could build their higher education in the remaining years.

He closed the book and stood up to stretch and yawn, having slept longer than he anticipated. After the cold reception he and the other human students had received last night, Jacob hoped to shower before the gargoyles could wake up and harass him. However, though he couldn't see the sun from his window, the darkening sky told him that sunset was not too far off.

Jacob grabbed his towel and toiletries bag and off his bed and made his way down to the dormitory's bathroom on the ground floor. Though he was athletic, Jacob thought of the strain of having to walk down six flights of stairs for each bathroom run and then back up to his room – it was a tiring thought.

But when Jacob got to the bathroom door, he was stopped short of entering when a voice called out to him from down the hallway. "And where do you think you are going?"

Jacob turned and saw Aitana standing there, clad only in a towel and holding her own bag of toiletries, her eyebrows raised. The sight took him aback and he had to recover before answering. "I was thinking about going to take a shower."

"Not in there you're not."

Jacob looked around the door for signs indicating that, in his haste to get clean, he was about to intrude on the ladies' room. However, "I don't see any signs that say I can't."

Aitana grinned. "You really know very little about gargoyle culture, don't you? Bathing for them is like fighting or hunting – gender doesn't matter."

"Oh." Jacob nodded slowly as he thought about the ramifications of the gargoyles' unisex culture. "That could be a problem."

"Only if you think you're going in there before I do."

"I'm pretty sure I got here first."

The two stood there in a silent standoff until Jacob stepped towards Aitana, dropped his towel and bag on the floor, opened his left hand and placed his fisted right hand onto the open palm. He looked into her eyes and said, "Best two out of three."

Without breaking line of sight with him, Aitana dropped her bag and readied her hands for the impending match. "I'm ready."

They counted together as they primed their fists, "One, two, three – shoot!"

Aitana smiled. "My rock beats your scissors."

They reset and primed again. "One, two, three – shoot!"

"Ha! Paper beats rock," Jacob said in victory.

"Last chance," she replied as she reset. "One, two, three – shoot!"

* * *

Jacob heard the gargoyles wake up as he ascended the last flight of stairs. Aitana had been true to her word to not take too long in the bathroom, but he still had to hurry through his shower to be out by sundown. 

He walked into the room just as Malach came inside from his perch. He paused at the window and asked, "Should I expect you to come in dripping wet and wearing only a towel every night?"

Jacob snorted as he closed the door behind him went to the bundle of clothes he had received from the school last night. "You wear a loincloth and make a crack about my towel?"

"I wear _two_ loincloths and a vest, thank you."

"Anyway, to answer your question: no. We non-nocturnals are going to work out a shower schedule so there aren't any more surprises."

"Pardon?"

Jacob looked over his shoulder and smiled. "Don't worry about it."

Malach stepped down from the window and grabbed a cloth off the top of his desk. "Did you leave any hot water?"

"This place could probably afford a water heater the size of a small house for each dorm. I think you'll be fine."

"Good. We did not get hot water for my clan until six years ago; I have spent too much time in cold rivers to go back to that lifestyle."

"I heard gargoyles weren't bothered by the cold."

Malach smiled. "Every gargoyle in the world looks different from all others, and yet you treat us as though we are all the same. I am amazed."

"Okay, forget it."

Malach let out a short laugh as he grabbed a leather pouch off his desk which contained a bar of soap. On his way out the door, Malach put a hand on Jacob's shoulder. "You have six years to learn these things. Do not worry about being wrong on a few things at this point in your training."

Jacob heard the females from across the hall leaving their room at about the same time as Malach, and the trio engaged in small talk on their way down the stairwell. Jacob laid out his school uniform on the bed and skimmed over a sheet of paper which came with the uniform. It listed his measurements to ensure the fit of his clothes, the uniform's cleaning instructions, how to properly tie his necktie – a Windsor knot – and what articles were optional during what seasons – blazers in September through October, then April through June, except when expressly required; and sweaters in place of the blazer at the student's discretion in the colder months.

"That's a lot to go through every evening," he said idly.

The school had provided two pairs of black slacks, three long-sleeved, collared white shirts with the school's crest – Gules, two keys in saltire Or, beneath an Azure gargoyle salient, Argent armed – embroidered over the left breast, two neckties with red and gold alternating in diagonal bars down the fabric, one black, single-breasted blazer with the school's crest embroidered on the coat's left, larger and with considerably more detail than on the shirt, and one gold sweater.

Jacob donned one of the pairs of slacks, a long-sleeved shirt, and the blazer, followed by a pair of socks and the one pair of dress shoes he brought with him, which fortunately happened to be black to match the slacks. The necktie, however, was less cooperative than the rest of the uniform, and it took several references to the provided sheet to get the knot right with some degree of accuracy.

Once dressed, Jacob consulted his class schedule and packed the necessary books into the simple, blue backpack that he had been carrying around with him since the fourth grade, which he slung over his right shoulder. Even he marveled at the fact that it had not fallen apart in the decade he had owned it.

For the second time tonight, Jacob left his room, made his way down the staircase and into the main hall of the dormitory, which was now well crowded by the gargoyle students standing in a single-file line which snaked from the bathroom and almost entirely around the hall. Most of them looked like their patience was wearing thin as they stood around with their toiletry kits, some still clothed and others in towels, and Jacob picked up on snippets of conversation:

"You know, they don't have this problem in Urban Hall. They get a bathroom on each floor."

"The first group has been in there for fifteen minutes. Someone shout in there and tell them to come out."

"At this rate, we're going to have to skip breakfast before class."

"Remind me to set the sun earlier so I can get here first."

Jacob walked past the line quickly on his way out the door, but as he passed near the end of the line a gargoyle reached out and grabbed Jacob's left arm.

It could well have been a bear that got hold of him. This particular gargoyle was close to seven feet tall and pushing three-hundred pounds – clearly a Class Five contender – iron-red skinned and with his black mane cut short but otherwise loosely styled. Barely turning his head, the gargoyle looked down at him and asked in a thick Australian accent, "Is that what our uniform looks like all done?"

"Yeah, this is it."

The gargoyle paused to examine him, then sneered and said, "It looks like a monkey suit." He then let Jacob go and nodded towards the door as if to give him permission to keep on his course, which he didn't hesitate to do.

Once outside he saw Osyka leave Urban Hall, and noted that her school uniform differed in that the slacks were replaced by a long, red, white, and gold plaid skirt, and he made a short jog over to her. "Hey," he said when he was close.

"Good evening," she replied, pausing to let him catch up before the two walked together.

"Listen, I never apologized for yesterday. I didn't mean to be insulting, I just grew up calling it the Territory. I'll be more careful from now on."

Osyka let out a short laugh. "I don't care, really. I just wanted to see if I could get you to jump."

Jacob shook his head. "It seems like everybody's been doing that lately."

When they were at the top of the stairs heading down to the parade grounds, Jacob asked, "So, why is it that you wanted to come here? I didn't hear you say that yesterday."

"I want to be the gargoyles' representative in government," she replied.

"Do you have some genetic secret and know some legal loopholes to make that happen?" he mused.

She looked at him with a crooked smile, "As in with the Bureau of Gargoyle Affairs, not Parliament."

"Congress."

"Parliament's the building, Congress is the body. Same thing."

"Anyway, so you came to a French school to be an American bureaucrat. Seems odd."

She laughed. "It is. In high school I had to do a certain amount of community service for graduation credits, and I got a spot at one of the nearby gargoyle schools. My job essentially was limited to grading papers and doing some basic tutoring.

"My first day there – or night, rather – the youths' instructor says to the class, 'This is Osyka. She is a human, but she speaks for me. If you give _her_ trouble, then you're giving _me_ trouble, and then you'll _be_ in trouble. Any questions?'"

Jacob snorted and said, "Sounds like some teachers I've had."

"She was actually very nice, but you know how gargoyles are when it comes to hierarchies; they're very important to establish. And it certainly did the trick, because I never had a single youth give me grief. Actually, after my community service ended there, I was asked to come back as an assistant lacrosse coach; so I was in a position of authority over them, not just an auxiliary.

"The more I spent time with the gargoyles, the more I learned of all the things that they need and all the ways the government tries to do just the bare minimum when it comes to enforcing the Health and Welfare Act. Secretary Glenn does what he can, but there's so much more that they need. I want to fill in the gaps in service, so to speak."

"And by coming here you want to get some credibility with the gargoyle population."

"Exactly. And when you figure that probably every gargoyle here now is going to end up becoming a clan leader at least, if not national leaders, these connections will be invaluable."

"Spoken like a true politician," he said with a smile.

She replied only with a grin.

* * *

Jacob and the other humans managed to get more of a breakfast than the gargoyles, who slowly filtered into the cafeteria as they finished their shower rotations. As with the first night, the humans sat at their own table and the gargoyles established a rather large buffer zone of empty tables as they came in to sit down. 

After the meal, Jacob made his way through the former palace in search for his first class: astronomy.

The room in which the class was assigned was arranged like a small lecture hall, with the capacity to seat about sixty students. The gallery's six rows connected ten seats on a common bar, but the seats themselves independently swiveled and reclined to some extent, and each came with a transparent, acrylic desk surface that folded over from the right arm. The wall which the seated students faced had a tall whiteboard which was connected to the room's Network outlet to allow notes the professor made to be uploaded to the class' netsite. On the floor of the lecture hall were the much more traditional desk and lectern for the professor.

Jacob debated where he should take his seat and eventually settled on a seat in the middle of the second row back from the floor, as he could never stand sitting in the front row of a class. Other students found the class as the start of the period drew near, including Loren, Mai, and Aitana, who all joined Jacob in the second row.

By the time the five-minute warning bell rang at five-to-eight, a few over forty students were seated in the classroom. Not long after the last student trailed in, the professor entered. He was a tall male gargoyle who, in Jacob's estimation, could have been either a very fit one-hundred-year-old or an eighty-year-old who looked a few years older, but tall as he was, he was not the mass of muscles that so many of the gargoyles of that stature were which Jacob had met. His skin was olive-colored, and his short brown hair was penetrated by four horns, each about as long as Jacob's forearm, which grew out from his brow towards the posterior of his skull.

While the students fidgeted in their chairs as they adjusted to their new uniforms, the professor was clothed simply in khaki slacks and a button-front shirt with the top two buttons left open. He also wore a navy blue blazer with the school's crest on the left breast, the only article of clothing which indicated his status as a member of the school's faculty.

The opening bell rang at precisely eight-o-clock. The professor looked up from the stack of papers he had placed on the lectern and, despite his speaking in French, spoke with a recognizably English accent, "Good evening students, my name is Warren. In case you haven't looked at my biography page on the school's netsite, I was a student here from the years Nineteen Fifty-Eight to Nineteen Sixty-Four, and this is my second teaching session here. In the years I haven't been here in Avignon, I've mostly been at Cambridge, but I have also taught at Yale and Stanford Universities.

"To get right to the point, the purpose for brining humans into this fine institution was not so that we can learn to live side-by-side – I think we've been doing that well for the last few centuries – but to live _amongst_ each other. So, while I see that you have congregated into your respective packs, I think you will find it much more exciting to be amongst each other than simply next to each other."

Warren ignored the various groans of discontent from the gargoyle students while he consulted his student roster. "Miss Moraes-Ribeiro?" Aitana raised her hand and he looked at her with a smile. "A lovely name. Why don't you come up front between these two fellows?" he said, indicating an empty seat between two medium-sized males, and Aitana made her way down.

"Excellent. Mister Duceppe?" Loren nodded. "I think you'll find a seat among the students up there in the fourth row."

Loren collected his books and crossed over Jacob on his way to the aisle. "And I thought we were uncomfortable in the auditorium," he said idly.

"Miss Ling?"

"Yes."

"Again, another lovely name. Humans do have the best names, but then I suppose you came up with the practice and _would_ know best. I think, Miss Ling, the seat directly behind you would be comfortable."

After Mai took her seat, Warren looked at Jacob. "Oh, but I can't just leave you alone, Mister," he consulted the sheet, "Goldberg, now can I?" He scanned the rows of students and settled on a blue-toned, gryphon-like gargoyle in the front row. "What is your name?"

"Anna," she replied. "From the Ohlstadt clan."

"Would you mind going back a row and making sure Mister Goldberg doesn't feel left out of this class?"

Anna looked back at him warily, but then looked at Warren and said, "Of course, professor." She collected her things, moved back the one row, and took the seat next to Jacob that had moments before been filled by Loren.

Warren spoke after Anna was settled in her seat, "Excellent. I think the experiment this school has embarked on will be a fine success with your cooperation. Now, to the subject for which you all came out this evening."

He handed a stack of papers to the student nearest to him in the front row and said, "Would you please take one and pass them down?" He then looked up and addressed the class, "I trust you all to read the syllabus on your own time, and if you should lose a copy or would like one in another of the more familiar languages this school accommodates in its publications – English, Spanish, or Chinese – consult the netsite for this class.

"The Roman soldier, philosopher, writer, and gargoyle Rostratus said that humanity would learn to tolerate gargoyles once it found a use for them, and the worst possible thing would be for humans to decide that gargoyles were useless. He thought soldiering and hunting would be the gargoyle race's niches within human society, but humans became quite adept at conducting wars and tracking down game on their own time – to say nothing of domestication and agriculture. And so humans did decide we were something of a nuisance, and I'm sure we are all aware of the consequences of _that_ determination.

"In the late-Fifteenth Century, however, a human decided to break five-hundred years of European isolation, and however many years of his own misfortunes, and felt it was time for him to cross the Atlantic Ocean. He got the best navigation instruments of the day, but he insisted on one particular instrument to keep him on course at night – a gargoyle.

"Why a gargoyle would willingly get on a boat knowing that he could be adrift for months will always give rise to speculation, but Carlos the Strong of Linares provided expert navigation for the voyage, and indeed it was he, not the humans, who was the first to spot the Caribbean islands in the early morning hours, thus discovering the New World for Europe.

"From that point on, gargoyles were found to have usefulness in human societies. As the years went on—" he was briefly interrupted as a student walked down from the back row with extra syllabi in hand. "Just put them on the desk, thank you. As the years went on, gargoyles slowly integrated into various human professions, but we were always valued for our keen knowledge of the night sky.

"Our knowledge bore fruit with the arrival of a gargoyle in London in Fifteen Seventy-Seven, who had glided in on the wind from Wales with copious amounts of meticulously recorded astronomical data he had taken over forty years, and which he said could explain such things as the motions of the planets, the stars, and other heavenly bodies.

"He, of course, was chased out of London on the next favorable wind. Worse still, he found himself in Oxford." He paused as a few students chuckled. "But there by some miracle he did manage to find a person willing to give him a fair audience, Sir William Claybrook. Sir Claybrook helped the gargoyle refine his work, gave him a name, and then represented the work to the scientific community; and thus were born Robert of Wales' Laws of Planetary Motion, which have allowed the humans to do all sorts of fantastic things and which we will explore in further detail as this course goes forward."

Warren picked up a remote control from the desk and pointed it towards the back of the classroom. He pressed a button, and a panel opened from the wall to reveal a projector while at the same time a screen lowered from the ceiling to cover the room's whiteboard. The professor then aimed the remote at the light switches near the door and, turning a small wheel on the remote, turned down the lights.

"That, my students, is very cool," he said with a grin. He pulled a laptop from a shelf in the base of the lectern, and after a few key strokes the projector came to life to display time lapse photography of Avignon taken with an east-facing camera on top of Constantine Hall.

Over the course of two minutes, one month of sunrises and sunsets, good weather and bad, flew by. Warren spoke while the small movie played, "What I intend to teach you in this class is quite simple: How the universe works." A few of the students snorted in amusement.

"Other than glimpses on the television or in the theatres, you will never get to see the sun – other than our human friends, of course – but you shouldn't lament this. The light from the sun hogs all the glory from the other wonders of the universe that you will spend your natural lives looking at. It's only fair that, as you live by the stars, you should also have an understanding of how they work."

Warren looked at the projection screen as the mini-movie came to an end, and he said, "That's actually from my first session teaching here back in Nineteen Ninety-Eight. I tried to make a film from this past month, but some joker decided to steal my camera."

He typed into his laptop after the movie ended, and a detailed view of the night sky appeared. "Were you to go outside right now and find that all the lights in Southern France were out, this is the kind of night sky you could expect to see. In honor of our navigator ancestors, who paved the way for our 'usefulness' in this human-led world, I will also teach you to know the night sky better than you know yourself."

The professor let the students admire the projected night sky for a few moments before he turned off the projector, retracted the screen and turned on the lights. He then took another stack of papers, blank star maps, and walked to each row to distribute them to the students. "To that end," he said as he passed the maps out, "I would like you to tap into your memories and – oh, let's make this easy – draw the northern sky over your homes as it will appear this month at midnight, and assume a new moon."

Jacob joined with the other students in a not-so-silent airing of discontent, but they were quieted by Warren. "It's only for diagnostic purposes. You will be able to draw any month at any time for either Avignon or your homes by the end of this course. And, to be sure, I do have very precise coordinates of your homes to allow me to check and make sure you aren't merely putting a myriad of dots on your sheets and hoping to approximate the positions of stars in the process.

"Do the best you can, naming constellations and stars as you know them. Although you _will_ be receiving a grade on this assignment, again, it will be a diagnostic grade only. But when you consult your syllabus, you will see that future quizzes like this will each count for one percent of your grade, for a total of fifteen percent of your trimester grade; and one of these charts _will_ appear on your final exam."

Warren sat at his desk and the students looked back at him almost expressionless. He smiled at them and said, "You have twenty minutes. You may begin."

* * *

_How am I supposed to know the positions of the stars from memory_? Sophie asked herself. _I can barely see any stars in the city_! Indeed, the last time she ever saw a brilliant night sky was during the Blackout of 2009; and that during in the winter, not September as Warren had asked for. 

She looked at the clock and saw that there were only a few minutes left before he said he would collect the quizzes, and all she had managed to put down were Ursa Minor and Major, and Draco.

_Where is Cassiopeia_?

Sophie tapped her pencil on her desk and then tugged again at her uniform's skirt, which she was finding to be uncomfortable at best, despite its being tailored.

A quick glance around the room reassured her that some students were having just as much trouble as she was, but others still seemed to be having no trouble at all. Two rows down she noticed that Malach was leaned back comfortably in his chair as he twirled his pencil between his talons. His quiz sheet was turned over on his desk.

_He lives in the forest. Probably all he can do is look at the stars_, she mused.

"One more minute," Warren called out from his desk, and Sophie sighed. She squiggled a W in the higher altitude where she figured Cassiopeia should be, made a rhombus of sorts over Draco and labeled it Cepheus, then turned her paper over.

This, she figured, was not going to be one of her favorite classes. But then again she had never particularly cared for classes that were scheduled so close to lunch.


End file.
